Ottoman Empire Fiction

The Ottoman Empire was at the height of its power during the 16th century when Cecilia Baffo Veniero was kidnapped from her Venetian homeland and chosen to be the wife of Selim II, successor to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. She would be known as Nurbanu. The Mapmaker's Daughter vividly imagines the confession of Nurbanu as she lies on her sickbed narrating the spectacular story of her rise to the pinnacle of imperial power, determined to understand how her extraordinary destiny was shaped. 

Adora's mahogany hair and violet eyes captivated young Prince Murad the moment he saw her in a convent garden, and their love flowered like the peach blossoms surrounding them. But Orkahm, Grand Turk of an empire, claimed Adora for his bride, tearing her from her young love as she wept bitter tears. Destiny might carry them to other lands and other loves, but Murad and Adora were meant only for each other - forging a magnificent love that lies forever in the pages of history....  

The body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the unsolved murder of another Englishwoman, 10 years before. A magistrate in the new secular courts, Kamil Pasha, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a mystical voice, a young Muslim woman recounts her own relationship with one of the dead women and with the suspected killer.

In a gender reversal of Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights: Tales from a 1,001 Nights, Ottoman princess Esma Sultan seduces a different Christian lover each night, only to have him drowned in the morning. The Sultaness's true passion burns only for the Christian-born soldier charged with carrying out her brutal nightly death sentence: her drowning guard, Ivan Postivich.