The Sufi Mysteries Quartet
It’s easier to solve a crime than solve yourself
"Completely engrossing and richly atmospheric.
Tenth century Baghdad comes alive through the eyes of a dazzling cast of characters."
—Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of Blackwater Falls, The Getty-Khattak Mysteries, and The Khorasan Archives
The Lover
Baghdad, 295 Hijri (907 CE)
Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes and begs her to bring some justice to the death of a local boy, she is forced to face the suffering of the most vulnerable in Baghdad and the emotional and mystical legacy of her mother, a famed ecstatic whose love for God eclipsed everything. The Lover is a historically sensitive mystery that introduces us to the world of medieval Baghdad and the lives of the great Sufi mystics, washerwomen, Hadith scholars, tavern owners, enslaved servants, corpsewashers, police, and children indentured to serve in the homes of the wealthy. It asks what it means to have family when you have nearly no one left, what it takes to love and be loved by those who have stuck by you, and how one can come to love God and everything He’s done to you.
Book One in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet
Amazon Bestseller • Over 4 Stars on Goodreads and Amazon
The Jealous
Baghdad 295 Hijri (907 CE)
When a distinguished scholar dies at the Barmakid hospital in Baghdad, nearly everyone points the finger at his enslaved servant, Mu’mina, as the one who called a demon to kill him. Tein, a former frontier fighter turned investigator with the Grave Crimes Section, has no time for religion, let alone jinn, and sets out to prove her innocent. But Ammar, Tein’s superior and old wartime friend, has already pushed her case before the Police Chief’s court where she’s sure to be executed or condemned to rot in the prisons built into the damp walls of Baghdad’s Round City.
With the help of his twin sister, Zaytuna, his childhood friend, Mustafa, and Zaytuna’s friend, the untamable Saliha, Tein plunges into a dangerous investigation that takes them into the world of talisman-makers and seers, houses of prostitution and gambling, and the fractious secular and religious court systems, all in an effort to turn back the tragic circumstances set in motion by Ammar’s destructive fear of a girl horribly wronged.
Book Two in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet
Award Winning • Over 4 Stars on Goodreads and Amazon
The Unseen
Baghdad 295 Hijri (908 CE)
When a young man is found dead, killed in the exact manner as a martyr slain on the fields of Karbala some two hundred years before, there is no mistaking it as anything other than an attack on the Shia community of Baghdad. The city is on edge as religious and political factions are exposed sending the caliph’s army into the streets. Ammar and Tein have to clear the case, one way or another, before violence erupts. But Zaytuna has had a visionary dream of the murder that holds the key to solving the case. Can she read its signs? And will Tein and Ammar listen?
Book Three in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet
The Peace
Baghdad 296 Hijri (908) CE
A student believed to hold a controversial Qur’an manuscript goes missing. Some scholars are only too happy to see him gone while others want to see the only remaining copy of Ibn Mas`ud’s infamous codex. Mustafa draws Tein, Ammar, and Zaytuna into a case that pits them against elite scholarly circles and families, even those close to the court itself, but most dangerously of all, a case that will test the boundaries of Zaytuna’s love.
Book Four in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet