The Janissary Tree Lib/E

The Janissary Tree, the first book in a new series, is set in a most extraordinary world and features a most extraordinary sleuth. 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 Togalu, 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. He finds sweet salvation in the arms of another man's wife (this is not your everyday eunuch). And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years earlier the sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?

About the Author :
Jason Goodwin is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Investigator Yashim series. The first four books-The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, The Bellini Card, and An Evil Eye-have been published to international acclaim. Goodwin studied Byzantine history at Cambridge and is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, among other award-winning nonfiction. He lives with his wife and children in England. Stephen Hoye has worked as a professional actor in London and Los Angeles for more than thirty years. Trained at Boston University and the Guildhall in London, he has acted in television series and six feature films and has appeared in London's West End. His audiobook narration has won him fifteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. Stephen Hoye has worked as a professional actor in London and Los Angeles for more than thirty years. Trained at Boston University and the Guildhall in London, he has acted in television series and six feature films and has appeared in London's West End. His audiobook narration has won him fifteen AudioFile Earphones Awards.

Review :
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" "An unusual, exotic historical mystery that reads like literature and moves like a thriller." -- "George Pelecanos, author of Drama City" "As Yashim wends his way in and out of the opulent palace and through the sordid back alleys of nineteenth-century Istanbul, the reader is treated to an appropriately exotic tour of a time and a place where intrigue, deceit, and corruption fueled perilous personal and political passions." -- "Booklist" "Goodwin, the author of a well-received history of the Ottoman Empire, Lords of the Horizons, makes a welcome shift to fiction with this impressive first of a new mystery series set in the empire's declining decades." -- "Publishers Weekly"