Book : The Sheen On The Silk A Novel - Perry, Anne

-Titulo Original : The Sheen On The Silk: A Novel

-Fabricante :

Ballantine Books

-Descripcion Original:

Arriving in Constantinople in 1273, Anna Zarides vows to prove the innocence of her twin brother, Justinian, who has been exiled to the desert for conspiring to kill a nobleman. Disguising herself as a eunuch named Anastasius, Anna moves freely about in society, maneuvering close to the key players involved in her brother’s fate, including Zoe Chrysaphes, a devious noblewoman with her own hidden agenda, and Giuliano Dandolo, a ship’s captain conflicted by his growing feelings for Anastasius. As leaders in Rome and Venice plot to invade Constantinople in another Crusade to capture the Holy Land, Anna’s discoveries draw her inextricably closer to the dangers of the emperor’s treacherous court-where it seems that no one is exactly who he or she appears to be. Review “With her visionary sensibility, Anne Perry is the master of the ‘you are there’ school of hist-myst storytelling.”- The New York Times Book Review “Remarkable . . . [Anne Perry sets] an engaging personal story against a rich backdrop of events to convey the intrigue and extreme peril that characterized the struggles between the faiths of the countries bordering the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century.”- The Star-Ledger “[Perry] gives the reader a real feel for the sights, sounds and smells of Constantinople in the time of the Crusades, as well as tastes of Venice, Rome, Sicily, and Jerusalem.”- St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Perry escalates the tension in subtle ways [and] creates a deep sense of impending doom.”- Dayton Daily News “[A] grandly scaled epic . . . with a canny eye for drama, [Perry] makes this complex historical background both vivid and clear.”- Kirkus Reviews About the Author Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including Dark Assassin and The Shifting Tide, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade,and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as six holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Grace. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. One Anna Zarides stood on the stone pier and gazed across the dark waters of the Bosphorus toward the lighthouse of Constantinople. Its fires lit the sky with a great beacon outlined against the paling March stars. It was beautiful, but she was waiting for the dawn to show her the citys rooftops and, one by one, all the marvelous palaces, churches, and towers she knew must be there. The wind was chill off the waves, whose crests were only barely visible. She heard the sound of them sucking and hissing on the pebbles. Far away on the promontory the first rays of daylight caught a massive dome, a hundred, two hundred feet high. It glowed a dull red, as if with its own inner fire. It had to be the Hagia Sophia, the greatest church in the world, not only the most beautiful, but the heart and soul of the Christian faith. Anna stared at it as the light strengthened. Other rooftops grew clearer, a jumble of angles, towers, and domes. To the left of the Hagia Sophia she saw four tall, slender columns, like needles against the horizon. She knew what they were, monuments to some of the greatest emperors of the past. The imperial palaces must be there, too, and the Hippodrome, but all she could see were shadows, white gleams of marble here and there, more trees, and the endless roofs of a city larger than Rome or Alexandria, Jerusalem or Athens. She saw the narrow stretch of the Bosphorus clearly now, already growing busy with ships. With an effort she made out the vast battlements of the shoreline, and something of the harbors below them, crowded with indistinguishable hulls and masts, all riding the safe calm within the breakwaters. The sun was rising, the