The Janissary Tree

Download or read book The Janissary Tree written by Jason Goodwin and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yashim is no ordinary detective. It's not that he's particularly brave. Or that he cooks so well, or reads French novels. Not even that his best friend is the Ambassador from Poland, whose country has vanished from the map. Yashim is a eunuch. As the Sultan plans a series of radical reforms to his empire, a concubine is strangled in the palace harem. And a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city's crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire. Brilliantly evoking Istanbul in the 1830s, The Ottoman Detective is a fast-paced literary thriller with a spectacular cast, from mystic orders and lissom archivists to soup-makers and a seductive ambassador's wife. Darker than any of these is the mysterious figure who controls the Sultan's harem.

Download or read book The Janissary Tree written by Jason Goodwin and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL This first book in the Investigator Yashim series is a richly entertaining tale, full of exotic history and intrigue, introduces Investigator Yashim: In 1830s Istanbul, an extra-ordinary hero tackles an extraordinary plot that threatens to topple the Ottoman Empire It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch. He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire's elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?

Download or read book The Snake Stone written by Jason Goodwin and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lefèvre, a French archaeologist, has arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine treasure. Yashim is commissioned to find out more about him. But when Lefèvre's mutilated body is discovered outside the French embassy, it turns out that there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once again, Yashim finds himself in a race against time to find the startling truth behind a shadowy secret society dedicated to the revival of the Byzantine Empire, caught in a deadly game deep beneath the city streets, a place where the stakes are high - and betrayal is death.

Download or read book Lords of the Horizons written by Jason Goodwin and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work of dazzling beauty...the rare coming together of historical scholarship and curiosity about distant places with luminous writing." --The New York Times Book Review Since the Turks first shattered the glory of the French crusaders in 1396, the Ottoman Empire has exerted a long, strong pull on Western minds. For six hundred years, the Empire swelled and declined. Islamic, martial, civilized, and tolerant, in three centuries it advanced from the dusty foothills of Anatolia to rule on the Danube and the Nile; at the Empire's height, Indian rajahs and the kings of France beseeched its aid. For the next three hundred years the Empire seemed ready to collapse, a prodigy of survival and decay. Early in the twentieth century it fell. In this dazzling evocation of its power, Jason Goodwin explores how the Ottomans rose and how, against all odds, they lingered on. In the process he unfolds a sequence of mysteries, triumphs, treasures, and terrors unknown to most American readers. This was a place where pillows spoke and birds were fed in the snow; where time itself unfolded at a different rate and clocks were banned; where sounds were different, and even the hyacinths too strong to sniff. Dramatic and passionate, comic and gruesome, Lords of the Horizons is a history, a travel book, and a vision of a lost world all in one.

Download or read book An Evil Eye written by Jason Goodwin and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Edgar® Award–winning author of The Janissary Tree comes the fourth and most captivating Investigator Yashim mystery yet! It takes a writer of prodigious talents to conjure the Istanbul of the Ottoman Empire in all its majesty. In three previous novels, Jason Goodwin has taken us on stylish, suspenseful, and vibrant excursions into its exotic territory. Now, in An Evil Eye, the mystery of Istanbul runs deeper than ever before. It's 1839, and the admiral of the Ottoman fleet has defected to the Egyptians. It's up to the intrepid Investigator Yashim to uncover the man's motives. Of course, Fevzi Ahmet is no stranger to Yashim—it was Fevzi who taught the investigator his craft years ago. He's the only man whom Yashim has ever truly feared: ruthless, cruel, and unswervingly loyal to the sultan. So what could have led Yashim's former mentor to betray the Ottoman Empire? Yashim's search draws him into the sultan's seraglio, a well-appointed world with an undercurrent of fear, ambition, and deep-seated superstition. When the women of the sultan's orchestra begin inexplicably to grow ill and die, Yashim discovers that the admiral's defection may be rooted somewhere in the torturous strictures of the sultan's harem. No one knows more about the Ottoman Empire and Istanbul than Jason Goodwin, of whom Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times: "Mr. Goodwin uses rich historical detail to elevate the books in this series . . . far above the realm of everyday sleuthing."

Download or read book The Bellini Card written by Jason Goodwin and published by Sarah Crichton Books. This book was released on 2010-03-02 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of the Edgar® Award–winning author Jason Goodwin's captivating historical mystery series Jason Goodwin's first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, brought home the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. His follow-up, The Snake Stone, more than lived up to expectations and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review as "a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth." Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin takes us back into his "intelligent, gorgeous and evocative" (The Independent on Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly compelling. Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdülmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellini's vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, but -- aware that the sultan's advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting -- decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini. But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killer's victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa d'Aspi d'Istria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.

Download or read book The Baklava Club written by Jason Goodwin and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped. His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use the code name La Piuma (the Feather). Yashim is convinced that the prince is alive. But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and has become dangerously distracted by falling in love. As he draws closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of his career: can he rescue the prince along with his romantic dreams? Jason Goodwin's bestselling 'Yashim' series has been published across the globe and received huge critical acclaim. In The Baklava Club, Goodwin takes Yashim on an adventure like no other, through the stylish, sensual world of Ottoman Istanbul.