Tasha Alexander’s TEARS OF PEARL (Sept. release, Minotaur)

The Award-Winning Lady Emily Series Continues

Looking forward to the joys of connubial bliss, newlyweds Lady Emily and Colin Hargreaves set out toward Constantinople for an exotic honeymoon. But on their first night in the city, a harem girl is found murdered—strangled in the courtyard of the Sultan’s lavish Topkapi Palace. Sir Richard St. Clare, an Englishman who works at the embassy in Constantinople, is present at the murder site and recognizes the girl as his own daughter who was kidnapped twenty years earlier. Emily and Colin pr omise the heartbroken father they’ll find her killer.

          As a woman, Emily is given access to the forbidden world of the harem and quickly discovers that it’s mysterious, sheltered walls offer no protection from a ruthless murderer. Soon, the Valide (mother to the Sultan) is found strangled with a silken bowstring and the head Eunuch, a scheming and powerful harem guard, is brutally killed. 

         Emily finds herself drawn into the dark intrigues of the Seraglio, among them trying to help a harem girl escape – a crime punishable by death.  But the kille r strikes again, kidnapping a concubine and threatening to kill her unless Emily agrees to meet him in secret.  She cannot wait for Colin or the authorities to save her and agrees to a rendezvous in the shadowy Basilica Cistern, a cavernous, echoing underground reservoir from which a victim’s screams would never be heard. In a heart-stopping finale, Emily must rely on her own sharp wits if she is to stop a killer bent on taking revenge no matter how many innocent lives he leaves in his wake.