The Silk Road Oracle

In 1323, nineteen-year-old Callista of Corinth watches her brother executed on false charges. With nothing left but a gift for reading lies in the faces of men, she turns her back on the only life she has ever known and steps onto a Genoese ship bound for the east. What begins as survival on the docks of Athens becomes something far more dangerous as Callista travels the full length of the Silk Road. In Constantinople she enters the web of a powerful noblewoman. In Baghdad she learns the terrible cost of knowledge. In Samarkand and Kashgar she loses people she has come to love. And in the war-torn streets of Xi'an she is forced to choose between power and peace. Armed only with her uncanny ability to see what others hide, Callista will become many things: merchant, spy, lover, and finally the woman they call the Oracle. But every truth she uncovers and every alliance she forges carries a price. By the time she reaches the edge of the known world, the road has taken almost everything from her. A sweeping historical novel about power, perception, and the long search for a place to stop running, The Silk Road Oracle is both an epic journey across fourteenth-century empires and an intimate portrait of a woman who learns that the greatest danger—and the greatest gift—is the ability to see the world clearly.