By Leslie Lindsay Kate Braithwaite’s CHARLATAN is brimming with intrigue, power, mystique. There’s more.  Scandal. Panic. Fortune tellers. Scheming woman. Love affairs. Prisoners in dungeons.  It’s dark, intricate plotting, well-developed characters will pull you in and not let you go even when you’re taken on a bumpy journey in a royal carriage down rutted roads to the execution pyre. You’ll feel the heat, your nose will singe with the scent of burning flesh and hair; you’ll hear the guttural screams and wonder how human nature could be so cruel. Not being a huge French history connoisseur, I found Kate Braithwaite’s historical depth impressive, her writing highly sensory (there was a time I had to sit the book down it ‘got’ to me so much), and the braiding of two plot lines impeccable. The story centers around Athenais, King Louis XIV’s glamorous mistress and mother to seven of his children. Athenais has left her older two children and husband to play this part for the king. She lives at Versailles in a well-appointed apartment, but has …