Fires over Constantinople. A sweeping, heartrending Byzantine historical novel about faith and survival, a hidden relic, family betrayal, a wartime sacrifice, an impossible choice, and the letter that outlasts an empire

Her father's last icon was hollow. And inside the wood, something was burning. In a city of barking dogs and gathering smoke, Theodora grinds pigment by candlelight, trying to finish the painting that killed her father. The Panagia's robe must be the color a woman sees when she closes her eyes after weeping. She has never been able to match it. But tonight she discovers something else: a seam in the back of the panel, too straight to be natural, with something loose and crackling hidden inside. Before she can pry it open, the fist falls on her door. "You're grinding pigment at dawn, " her brother Andreas says, filling the frame like he fills every doorway. "I'm finishing my father's icon before the Patriarch's men seal the church." "He was delirious with fever.
He didn't know what he was saying." "He knew. He said it to Theodora, and to no one else. You were standing in the doorway. You heard him." The icon was a dying man's gift to his daughter. To everyone else in Constantinople, it is something to be seized, sold, or burned. There is a blind monk who sees far too much. There is a splinter with a true name and a terrible price. There is a Venetian offer from a sister, and a library hidden beneath a mosque. There is fire coming from the sea, and a covenant that binds Theodora's family across generations. As the walls of the empire blaze and the iconoclasts close in, Theodora guards a secret hidden in a single plank of walnut, a relic worth more than her life and the lives of everyone she loves. To protect what her father entrusted to her, she must choose what to save and what to surrender to the flames. And carry a letter, and a truth, across a lifetime of ash. Fires over Constantinople is a sweeping, heartrending Byzantine historical novel about faith and survival, a hidden relic, family betrayal, a wartime sacrifice, an impossible choice, and the letter that outlasts an empire. Perfect for readers who love richly atmospheric historical fiction, women who guard dangerous secrets, faith under fire, and the sweeping emotion of Kate Quinn, Kristin Hannah, and Madeline Miller.
A standalone historical novel.