Time's Fickle Glass

TIME’S FICKLE GLASS is an extensively revised and rewritten version of the previously published novel A PORTRAIT IN TIME by Charles J. Schneider, with substantive alterations made to the original story in order to allow more seamless integration with the novel’s planned sequel: THE ARRIVAL OF AN HOUR.

A beautiful, nude woman and two equally-naked dead bodies mysteriously appear in the special-exhibit gallery of Musée d’Orsay, the famed Paris art museum. There is no evidence trail; and the only clue Paris detective Michèle Crossier has to work with is surveillance footage of the un-clothed woman, who looks identical to the museum’s own Assistant Director: Susanne Bruante, a woman with a cut-throat reputation in the art-history world and a theory involving the famous Realist and Impressionist artists Gustave Courbet and Gustave Caillebotte, the ‘singular’ nude model used in their artwork, and her very own family.

With the Police Judiciare on her tail, Susanne finds herself a prime suspect in a surreal murder mystery that pulls in her family-members—from the present and the past. Faced with a woman who claims to be a relative from the nineteenth-century, Susanne—forced to come up with answers or endure more scrutiny from the police—must call in favors from some of the people she’s loved and left…including an old boyfriend who just happens to be doing research on time travel.

An intriguing, fast-paced, tightly-plotted and often-times steamy psychological thriller, TIME’S FICKLE GLASS defies categorization as it brings to the reader an enjoyable and exciting mixture of historical-fiction, romance, mystery, crime-drama, and time-travel science-fiction. Don’t miss this first book in a two-part series which promises to bring fact-and-fiction to art lovers who harbor a sensual-taste for the narratively-creative.