Jason Goodwin

"Without it there would be no such thing as a city skyline, or even a city as we know it. Yet Elisha Graves Otis invented the safe elevator almost by accident. He wanted simply to build a machine that would hoist a bedding factory's equipment safely. He built it, all right - and in doing so made possible the construction of the skyscraper and laid the technical foundation for dynamic urban centers around the world.". "In Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin recounts the story of the product and the business that Elisha Otis created. It is a peculiarly American tale of continuous growth and reinvention that continues even today at an ever-faster pace. Founded in 1853 in a ramshackle foundry on the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York, the company survived wars and depressions, bested competitors, and never took its eye off technological innovation. It transformed itself from a gritty manufacturer into an inventive engineering power and, ultimately, a sophisticated global enterprise."--BOOK JACKET.

A history of the Ottoman Turks, founders of an empire lasting 600 years and stretching from the Persian Gulf to Hungary, to Algeria. The author describes the harems, the artistic and technological achievements--the cannon was first used by them in the siege of Constantinople--and the religious tolerance to which he attributes the empire's longevity.

When a French archaeologist arrives in 1830s Istanbul determined to track down a lost Byzantine treasure, the local Greek communities are uncertain how to react; the man seems dangerously well informed. Yashim Togalu, who so brilliantly solved the mysterious murders in The Janissary Tree, is once again enlisted to investigate. But when the archaeologist's mutilated body is discovered outside the French embassy, it turns out there is only one suspect: Yashim himself.

"Join Investigator Yashim for a final exotic escapade in this rich Edgar Award-winning series In four previous novels, Jason Goodwin's Inspector Yashim, the eunuch detective, has led us through stylish, suspenseful, and colorful mysteries in the Istanbul of the Ottoman Empire. Now, in The Baklava Club, Yashim returns for his final adventure--and his most thrilling yet. Three naive Italian liberals, exiled in Istanbul, have bungled their instructions to kill a Polish prince--instead, they've kidnapped him and absconded to an unused farmhouse. Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who are passing along false orders under the code name La Piuma, the Feather. It falls to Yashim to unravel all this--he's convinced that the prince is alive and that the Italians have hidden him somewhere. But there are just a few problems: He has no idea who La Piuma is, and he's in no mood to put up a fight--he's fallen in love! As he draws closer to the farmhouse and to the true identity of La Piuma, what Yashim discovers leaves him shocked and in the most dangerous situation of his career. Goodwin has an eye for detail like no other, and in The Baklava Club he conjures Istanbul in all its glorious exoticism. This is a breathtaking, extraordinary conclusion to one of the most beloved series in mystery fiction, and its ending will leave you truly astonished"-- "Inspector Yashim must search for an Polish prince who has been taken hostage by an Italian revolutionary cell"--

"From the Edgar Award-winning author of The Janissary Tree, The Snake Stone, and The Bellini Card comes the fourth adventure of the famous investigator Yashim. When the admiral of the Ottoman fleet defects to the Egyptians, Yashim attempts to uncover the man's motives. But Fevzi Pasha is no stranger to Yashim: it was Pasha, in fact, who taught the investigator his craft years ago. He is the only man whom Yashim has ever truly feared: ruthless, cruel, and unswervingly loyal to the sultan. What dark secret has led his former mentor to betray the Ottoman Empire? While unraveling Pasha's curious history, Yashim is drawn ever deeper into the closed world of the sultan's seraglio, an intimate household populated by the young ruler's women, children, slaves, and eunuchs. It is a well-appointed world dominated by fear, ambition, and deep-seated superstitions--a lap of luxury where talented girls hold sway in the ladies' orchestra. But as the women of that orchestra inexplicably grow ill and die, Yashim discovers that his investigations into the admiral's defection have their roots in the torturous strictures of the sultan's harem, where every secret is sacred: a place where the normal rules are suspended and where women can simply disappear"-- "The fourth chapter in the adventures of Investigator Yashim, the eunuch detective"--