Spotlight & Giveaway: The Mirror by Nora Roberts

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Nora Roberts’s new release: The Mirror

#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts continues the hauntingly spectacular Lost Bride Trilogy with book two, The Mirror. 

When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming, the music playing, are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets.

Then one night the mirror appears and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past—and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again—a centuries-old curse that must be broken—and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Mirror 

Chapter One
Music that had been dim and distant poured around her now. Colors and shapes that had been
blurred and indistinct on the other side of the mirror sharpened.
Sonya gripped Owen’s hand—the hand of the cousin she hadn’t known existed only
months before. That hand was warm, that hand was real.
Instead of furniture stored, of white sheets draping it, people swirled around them.
Women with hair piled high, long dresses flowing, and men in sharp, dark suits danced,
laughed, drank. The room—the ballroom—smelled of flowers. There were so many of them.
And of perfume. An orchestra played something lively and quick.
She heard a woman laugh, high and bright, over the music. She saw a line of sweat slide
down the temple of a man with slicked-back hair as he led his partner in the dance.
And she heard her own heart pounding louder than the drumbeat.
When her hand trembled, Owen tightened his grip. And he said, almost casually, “This is
fucking weird.”
The bubble of hysteria in her throat came out in a breathless laugh. “I’ll say. I’ve done it
before, gone through, but this is the first time I was awake when I did. I thought, before, I
thought I’d dreamed it. But it’s not a dream.”
“Nope.” He scanned the room. “We know where we are. It’s the ballroom. Any idea
when?”
“1916. I read Deuce’s Poole family history book and looked through the pictures enough
times to know this is Lisbeth Poole’s wedding reception.”
A man, obviously enjoying his gin, stumbled right through her. “Oh my God.”
“That’s beyond weird.” Frowning, Owen turned to her, studied her with eyes a slightly
lighter shade of Poole green than her own. “Okay?”
She managed a nod. “We’re the ones out of place or time or whatever the hell. They
don’t see us, or feel us. Or most don’t. She’s not here.”
“Who?”
“Hester Dobbs. Murdering witch. She’s not here, not yet. This isn’t her time either.”
“Seeing as she’d be dead over a hundred years.”
“Maybe we can stop her. It’s not a damn dream, so maybe we’re here to stop her.
Thirteen spider bites, inside the wedding dress—that’s how Lisbeth dies today. If we can just—”
“What, strip her clothes off?”
“I don’t know. We have to try something. Where is she? Where the hell is Lissy?”
Owen pointed. “Other side of the ballroom? I’m taller, can see over more heads. I’ve
seen pictures, too, and that looks like a wedding-type dress to me.”
He shifted Sonya to the left.
“Yes! Yes, that’s her.”
As she started forward, people danced through her. Some gave her a jolt, like a mild
electric shock, others a chill that shot straight through her bones.
“It’s like walking through mud,” Owen muttered, and shoved a frustrated hand through
his unruly brown hair. “Or fricking quicksand.”
“I know. I know. It happened like this before. I can’t see her anymore. It’s so crowded.
Can you see her?”
“Just keep going. She’s moving to our right. She’s dancing. She’s—Shit!”
“What? What happened? I—” Now she saw, through a break in the dancers as they
glided. The look of shock and pain on the young, sweet face.
And then the shriek.
“We’re too late, too late.” But she kept pushing forward. “If we can’t save her, we need
to stop Dobbs from getting her wedding ring. She needs all seven rings. We need to get it first.”
As Lisbeth collapsed in her husband’s arms, Sonya felt the change in the air, the sudden
brittle bitterness of it.
Hester Dobbs, her hard beauty glowing, her dark eyes sparking with venom, all but
floated across the ballroom. Her waving fall of black hair seemed to stir in an unseen wind as
she approached the dying bride.
Enraged, Sonya cried out, “Stop! You bitch. Leave her alone.”
Dobbs snapped her head around. For an instant, just an instant, Sonya saw surprise, and
maybe a hint of fear ripple over the hard beauty of her face.
Then that unseen wind struck her, slamming into her like an icy fist. It broke her hold on
Owen’s hand, sent her flying back, flying through people who rushed forward.
She landed hard enough to leave her dazed and dizzy. As she fought to draw in a breath,
to push herself up, she watched a spider, wider than her palm, skittering across the floor toward
her.
Real, she thought, it was somehow real, somehow now.
The room filled with screams, with weeping, with rushing feet as she tried to scramble
up and away.
She saw its red eyes gleaming, and prepared for the first vicious bite.
An inch from her bare foot, Owen stomped on it. Her stomach rolled as she heard the
ugly crunch.
“Up.” He hauled her to her feet. “Move!”
“Did you get it? Did you get the ring?”
“It’s gone, and so’s the bride. We’re not.”
He dragged her through the chaos, shoved her through the mirror. And leaped after.
She tipped straight into Trey’s arms. And he wrapped them tight as the three dogs
swarmed them.
“I’ve got you. Jesus, you’re freezing.”
“It got so cold.” Now her teeth chattered with it.
“Are you hurt?” As he ran his hands over her, he looked at Owen. “Either of you hurt?”
“Sonya took a flight like you did outside the Gold Room.”
“I’m okay. It just rattled me.” Leaning into Trey, grateful for his warmth, she looked over
at Cleo. “It was Lisbeth Poole. We couldn’t stop it.”
“Let’s get you downstairs.” Cleo stroked Sonya’s hair. “Let’s get you both downstairs.”
“I need a drink.” As he spoke, and his scrappy mutt, Jones, sniffed at it, Owen looked at
the bottom of his shoe. “And a new pair of shoes.”
“What is that?” Cleo demanded.
“Evil spider guts.”
“Take them off! You can’t track evil spider guts through the house.”
“Yeah, that was my first thought.”
Cleopatra Fabares, Sonya’s best friend and housemate, took over.
“Trey, take Sonya downstairs. The kitchen. We all need a drink. You. Take those
disgusting shoes off,” Cleo ordered Owen again. “Leave them right here until we get something
to put them in.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“We’re right behind you. You can pour us both a whiskey. A double.”
As Owen bent to pull off his shoes, Cleo sucked in a breath that put him right back on
alert.
“The mirror. It’s gone. It’s just gone.”
He turned. “Son of a bitch.”
“Get those damn shoes off,” she insisted. “And let’s get the hell downstairs. Then you
and Sonya are going to start at the beginning, when the two of you just vanished inside that
damn mirror.”
“Whiskey first.”
Though a MacTavish—emotionally if not by blood—Sonya wasn’t one for whiskey.
Tonight, she’d make an exception. Still shaken, she let Trey lead her down from the ballroom,
down hallways, through the house as he snapped on lights.
“I don’t remember anything before I was standing up there in front of that mirror.”
She pushed at her hair, wished for a time to hold it back, then just let the weight of it fall
again.
“I don’t remember getting out of bed, walking up there. And you were there.”
“Cleo called.”
“Cleo called,” she murmured.
Cleo, her closest friend for a decade. Cleo, who’d moved into the manor with her
without hesitation even knowing it held a curse, ghosts, and a crazed dead witch.
Being Cleo, Sonya decided, those elements had served as some extra motivation rather
than any sort of deterrent. But then Cleo’s Creole grandmother was a self-proclaimed witch—
the good kind.
With the dogs, his Mookie and her Yoda, flanking them, Trey led her down to the main
floor.
At the base of the stairs, she paused to look at the portrait of Astrid Grandville Poole.
The first bride, so lovely, so tragic in her white dress.
“It started with her. Everything that’s happening now started with her, and on her
wedding day in 1806. When Hester Dobbs murdered her and pulled the ring from her finger.
“It has to end with me. It has to.” She looked up at him, into those deep blue eyes she’d
come to trust.

Excerpt. ©Nora Roberts. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: A finished copy of THE MIRROR by Nora Roberts

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and post a comment to this Q: What did you think of the excerpt spotlighted here? Leave a comment with your thoughts on the book…

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Meet the Author:

NORA ROBERTS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 230 novels, including Legacy, The Awakening, Hideaway, Under Currents, The Chronicles of The One trilogy, and many more. She is also the author of the bestselling In Death series written under the pen name J.D. Robb. There are more than 500 million copies of her books in print.

Amazon | Turn the Page | Books A Million