The Star of Istanbul: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

The first World War is underway; Germany has allied with the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish caliphs have declared jihad on the British Empire. Meanwhile, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson hesitates to enter the fray. Aboard the passenger liner Lusitania, war correspondent and American spy Kit Cobb has been assigned to shadow a German intellectual and possible covert agent who is believed to have information vital to the war effort. During the voyage Cobb is smitten with famed actress Selene Bourgani, who inexplicably seems to be working for the Germans.Cobb soon realizes this simple actress is anything but, as she harbors secrets that could pour gasoline on a world already in flames. From the doomed voyage of the Lusitania to the darkest corners of London to the powder keg that is Istanbul, Cobb must venture deep behind enemy lines and use all the cunning in his possession to uncover Bourgani's true motives.

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of more than a dozen novels, several story collections, and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. A recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.