Beneath a Marble Sky - Kindle
$9.99 Kindle Edition. Order directly from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Marble-Sky-John-Shors-ebook/dp/B00727MG9M/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1593204282&sr=8-1
Winner of the Gold Medal for Historical Fiction in ForeWord Magazine's 2004 Book of the Year Awards. Seventeen foreign editions sold: France (four editions), Holland, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Serbia, Catalan, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgarian, Korea, Indonesia, Poland, Russia, Singapore, and India. Over 120,000 copies in print in North America.
In 1632, the Emperor of Hindustan, Shah Jahan, consumed by grief over the death of his empress, Mumtaz Mahal, ordered the building of a grand mausoleum to symbolize the greatness of their love. Against scenes of unimaginable wealth and power, murderous sibling rivalries, and cruel despotism, Princess Jahanara tells the extraordinary story of how the Taj Mahal came to be, describing her own life as an agent in its creation and as a witness to the fateful events surrounding its completion.
To escape a brutal arranged marriage, Jahanara must become the court liaison to Isa, architect of the Taj Mahal. She is soon caught between her duty to her mother's memory, the rigid strictures imposed upon women, and a new, though forbidden, love. With exceptional courage, Jahanara dares to challenge the bigotry at court in order to spare the empire from civil war, and to save her father from his bellicose son, Aurangzeb, a man whose hatred would extinguish the Islamic enlightenment from the Mughal Empire. She enlists Ladli, her Hindu bestfriend, and Nizam, her guardian, as spies and accomplices, and urges her philosopher-brother Dara, the designated heir to the throne, to descend from his ivory tower.
As princess, daughter, sister, and mother, Jahanara will find herself faced time and time again with impossible choices, yet will discover the eventual consequences of her regal position. In Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors re-creates an historical Hindustan brimming with passion and intrigue, and containing the secret truth of the Taj Mahal for a world still in awe of its enduring majesty.
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