Two Novels by Colin Falconer
Requirements: EPUB Reader, Harem 0.28 MB , Seraglio 0.48 MB
Overview: Born in North London, Bowles moved to Australia in his twenties and worked as a taxi driver and guitarist before joining an advertising agency. In 1984 he moved to Sydney to pursue a career as a writer.
He worked as a freelance journalist for various major magazines and wrote scripts for radio and television before becoming a full-time novelist in 1990. His books have been translated into 17 languages.He lived for many years near Margaret River, Western Australia, where he and his late wife, Helen, raised two daughters. While writing, he also worked for many years in the volunteer ambulance service.
Genre: Fiction/Historical
Harem
From the author of the critically acclaimed When We Were Gods comes a dramatic, unforgettable novel of cruelty and passion, set in the great Harem of the Ottoman Empire.
In Constantinople there is only one ruler: Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, Lord of Lords of this World, Possessor of Men’s Necks, Allah’s Deputy, absolute ruler of the mighty Ottoman Empire. And at the heart of his palace is the Sultan’s vast Harem, the domain of hundreds of scented, pampered women—some wives, some concubines, some merely slaves. Among them is Gülbehar, the Sultan’s submissive favorite and mother of his heir; Julia, the daughter of an Italian lord, kidnapped when she attempted to flee Venice with her lover; and Hürrem, a Tartar girl from the Russian steppes, sold into slavery.
All three women are beautiful, but Hürrem is the most dangerous—ruthless in her desire to rule the Harem and, ultimately, Süleyman himself. Endlessly manipulative and clever, she carefully arranges the downfall of her rivals and endears herself to the Sultan, who places her at the center of the Empire’s power. It is his obsession with Hürrem—not his enemies—that in the end costs Süleyman his allies, his sons, and finally his dynasty.
Seraglio
Suleiman has the world at his feet; he has an Empire to rival that of any Caesar, and now his Vizier even wants to take his armies against the great infidel, the Pope, in Rome.
But the Sultan is a man in conflict with himself; he has the soul of a poet but the responsibility for jihad; he has a dream of building a great city while his advisers want him to tear cities down; his generals urge him to war when he wants only to spend his summers with Hurrem, the love of his life.
He is the most envied man in the world, yet he can no find peace. History itself records how Suleiman resolved all these dilemmas; but what he did in the end defies rational explanation. So what really happened behind the doors of the Sublime Porte?
Suleiman is still a young man when he is forced to face the circumstances of his own death. The law of the Osmanlis says that when his eldest son, Mustapha, succeeds to the throne he has the right to execute the three boys Suleiman has fathered with the woman he adores. Mustapha says he will never invoke the law. But can he trust him?
Meanwhile his army of wardogs strains at the leash. His lifelong friend and Vizier urges him to march on Rome. He is sick of war but has a duty to God to conquer in His name. His favoured wife, Hurrem, argues for love over his faith.
Has the most powerful man in the world no power over his own life?
But there are wheels within wheels; in the Italian colony, two men and a woman inextricably enmeshed in the politics of the Harem struggle with similar questions of life and the passions of the heart; how far should we go to make someone love us?
Can they find the peace that eludes Suleiman, the man they call the Lord of Life?
This is the astonishing conclusion to the story begun in HAREM; from the shadowed cloister of the seraglio to the mountain fastnesses of Persia; from the private steam baths of pashas to the dusty battlefields of the steppe; from the Sultan’s palace to the midnight docks at Galata this is a tale of vengeance and devotion, ruthlessness and compassion, as astounding as it is true.
Download Instructions:
Harem
http://ceesty.com/wLy23t
Seraglio
http://ceesty.com/wLy23a
Mirror:
Harem
http://ceesty.com/wLy23f
Seraglio
http://ceesty.com/wLy23j
