A Stranger in the Mirror
Sidney Sheldon
 A Stranger in the Mirror The love story between Josephine Czinski (Jill Castle) and Toby Temple is told through a flashback. The Templehaus are German immigrants coming to the USA. Freida Templehaus is the plump wife of a poet who would rather write poetry than work in the meat shop. Angered and faced with reality that her husband is weak, she controls the meat shop and rules the family home. She decides to have a child and they have a son named Tobias, who is noted to be born with an extremely large member. Throughout his childhood, Toby has always strived to earn his busy mother's affections, and has learned to gain it through comedy. However, in his teens, Toby has gained a large libido and after sleeping with many women, impregnates a classmate. To avoid her son marrying what she calls "a nobody", she packs up his bags and sends him to the city to become famous, hoping he would send for her soon. She lies to Eileen's father, the chief of police, that Toby ran away. Years later, the Czinski Family, a family of Polish Immigrants, are expecting their first born daughter. Their baby was born not breathing, causing the father to die of shock. However, the baby was indeed alive but has head trauma that would later cause her bad headaches. The mother named her Josephine. Mrs. Czinski moved to Odessa, Texas, and became a devout Catholic who believes her daughter's head aches to be the demon's attempt to possess her. Josephine grew up as a beautiful child, to the point that the "Oil People", the upper-class members of Odessa, would love having their children hanging out with her. Josephine is smitten with David Kenyon, the son of the wealthy Kenyons. However, on her thirteenth birthday, she embarrasses herself when she gets her menstruation in a swimming party and is scorned by the Oil Children, except for David, who shows sympathy. Soon after, Josephine stops her friendship with the Oil Children and hangs out with the other middle-class residents like her. She grows into a beautiful woman, and meets David once more after his long period away in college. David and Josephine start a relationship and it climaxes when she and David consummate their love and David proposes. However, as David tells his aging mother about his plans, she insults him about his choice and persuades him to marry Cissy Topping, a fellow Oil Child and former friend of Josephine. David makes a deal with Cissy that he will marry her only until Mama Kenyon dies so he can fulfill her wishes, but unknowingly, Cissy and Mama Kenyon have already planned for this and has no intention of leaving him. Unfortunately, Cissy asks Mrs. Czinski to do the wedding dress, and before David can tell Josephine, she finds out from her mother and, distraught, leaves for Hollywood under the name Jill Castle. Toby's career has a rocky start, and Toby goes into a depression when he finds out that his mother has died of a heart attack, yet he cannot attend her funeral due to Eileen's father on the lookout for him. He decides to join the army and along the way meets Clifton Lawrence, a prominent PR in Hollywood. After the war, he continues his career without Clifton's help due to many scammers using his story that Clifton's assistant does not tell him about Toby. Toby gets his big break when all the better comedians are unavailable to perform for the president of the United States. He gains fame soon after, and in the process catches Clifton's attention and Toby hires him. Toby begins his womanizing but unknowingly sleeps with Millie, the mistress of Al, a mafioso. Al tells Toby that Millie loves him and wants to marry him and threatens to kill him if he will not. Toby marries Millie, and avoids women to please Al. He impregnates her, but Millie dies in a birthing accident, but is not there to witness it due to Al allowing him to perform in South Korea. With no obligation, Toby begins womanizing once more. He gets a notorious reputation for ruining people for the slightest reasons. However, secretly, he is lonely as more people come that he fires people who have other engagements other than working for The Toby Temple Show and forces Clifton to drop his other clients so that he would be totally dependent on Toby. Meanwhile, nobody wants to hire someone like Jill. All the people willing to screen her only want her for sex. She lives in a rundown building with other actors like her, and starts a relationship with Alan, who is later revealed to be an adult film actor. He convinces her with the help of liquor and drugs to do a film with her, and at the end he writes her birth name on the credits. She only gets minimal small roles, but nothing that makes her recognizable. She realizes that she has to try earning fame their way—by using her body. She is brutally ravaged by a director for a small spot in a major movie, and finally begins her climb to the top. She sleeps with everyone to get jobs, until she makes it to the Toby Temple Show. Toby is infatuated with her, and goes crazy when she acts indifferently to his charm and wealth. He falls in love with her when he realizes that he doesn't feel alone with her around, and they marry despite Clifton's warnings. Those who have slept with Jill are too scared to admit they have in fear that Toby will ruin them. Meanwhile, Jill is now plotting revenge against those who have used her. One by one, she gets Toby to destroy the lives of those who have used her without necessarily admitting that she had sex with them all. Her final act is when she convinces Toby to get rid of Clifton (who ignored Jill in her early days and, when she convinced Toby to get her a role, called her a bad actress), as she would be his new manager. Clifton knew she would do that sooner or later, and tries to get on Jill's good side but fails. Jill becomes the new manager of Toby. In an act of revenge, he learns about Jill's adult film and bribes a technician to copy the film for him. However, it is too late as she has already fired him. Jill begins acting like his mother. She pushes him to go to all parties and attend all events to the point that Toby receives a stroke. Jill, still in love with Toby, forces him to recope, and he miraculously gets better. It is now Jill who has become the more popular of the two, and in the process meets David once again. David has a listless marriage to Cissy and his attempts to leave her has caused her to attempt suicide. However, she finally leaves him when she meets another man who is not as rich as David but looks like him and loves Cissy. Jill remains friends with him but starts to have feelings for him when she remembers their history. Toby relapses into a stroke, ruining his looks and ultimately paralyzing him. Jill has no will power to regain his ability, and accidentally says out loud that she wishes he would just die due to his gargoyle-like face, which Toby hears. She begins having nightmares of Toby trying to kill her, and the head aches come back after a long time. She decides kill Toby since his expected life span is more than twenty years, and leaving him would ruin her reputation as a heroine. She stages his death and makes it look like an accident while attempting to cure him, but Clifton is the only one who sees past the trick. He finds out that she killed him to be with David, who married her two months later in a cruise ship. However, Clifton uses his last resort and forces David to watch Jill's adult film. David is revealed to be an extreme racist, especially to Mexicans. It explains why David showed disdain at Jill's co-worker when he met her after college as well as the reason why he left to go to college: He caught his older sister having sex with the Mexican gardener and killed him with a letter-opener; his mother quietly paid Odessa's jail to make it look like he raped her daughter and committed suicide in jail and sent her deranged daughter to a mental hospital. It is revealed why Mama Kenyon forced him to marry Cissy, due to his bad choices. David breaks up with Jill and leaves on a helicopter. Clifton reveals himself to Jill. Jill, depressed, hallucinates and sees Toby's face in the water, and she jumps off the boat to be with him and dies. The captain of the boat resigns, starts a bistro, and tells Jill's story to others.