Books like Honor by Elif Şafak

Two intertwined stories illuminate love’s timeless power: a contemporary woman discovers a novel about Rumi and a 13th‑century dervish, while both narratives echo each other’s quest for freedom.

Novel; translated from English.

A murder mystery set in 1910s England, following Thomas Pitt, a police detective, as he investigates the killing of his wife's boss, Ainsley Greville.

A charming historical novel about two girls discovering friendship and independence in 1920s London.

Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into contemporary American scenery. In her poems, Muslim ritual and Qur'anic vocabulary move in next door to the idiom of suburban Americana, and the legendary Scheherazad of the *Thousand and One Nights* shows up in New Jersey, recast as a sophisticated postcolonial feminist. Kahf’s carefully crafted poems do not speak only to important issues of ethnicity, gender, and religious diversity in America, but also to universal human themes of family and kinship, friendship, and the search for a place to pray. She chronicles the specific griefs and pleasures of the immigrant and writes an amulet for womanly power in the face of the world’s terrors. Her poetic energy is provocative and sassy, punctuated now and then with a darker poem of elegiac sadness or refined rage.

A Breach of Promise tells the story of wealthy social climbers Barton and Delphine Lambert suing for their beautiful daughter Zillah's rejection by architect Killian Melville, who adamantly refuses to marry her.

A gripping tale of Old London Bridge, a living historical character, and its eight hundred denizens, set against the backdrop of the Great Plague and Great Fire in 1665 London, through the eyes of a young poet and his tormented former student, with a rich historical backdrop and supernatural elements, blending fiction, history, and fantasy in a captivating narrative that draws readers into a world of love, sacrifice, and the eternal question of fate versus free will.

Muslim women, the symbols of honor for their men, speak out in this timely and stunning book that takes us into the volatile heartland of Islam. The world's fastest-growing religion, with more than one billion adherents, Islam increasingly affects our lives: the oil-rich Muslim states of the Middle East are more important than ever in the aftermath of the Cold War, and here in America, Muslims now outnumber Jews. Yet Muslim culture remains a mystery to most Westerners. In Price of Honor, noted journalist Jan Goodwin shows how the restrictions on women's lives in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Gaza and the West Bank of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates act as a barometer to the growth of fundamentalism and the Muslim regimes' willingness to appease extremists. From royalty to rebels, from professional women to peasants, Price of Honor takes us into the hearts and homes of Muslim women. With devastating candor, these women relate the increasingly oppressive politics that govern their personal lives. They live in a world where women are confined, forbidden to work or be educated, and even killed because of men's "code of honor." Goodwin's interviews and reports include a princess who talks about her life as the sixteenth wife of a sheikh; a grandmother who was arrested and whipped eighty times when a lock of her hair slipped from under her veil; women who are raped and then imprisoned for "fornication"; doctors who perform hymen-restoration surgery on women about to be wed because nonvirgins may be killed by male relatives; and American converts to Islam who are completely veiled and accept their husbands' polygamy yet fear the increasing religious extremism and its effects on their lives. With these and many other telling stories, Goodwin brings to life a world in which women have become pawns in a bitter power game. Here is a provocative look inside Muslim society today - and a powerful wake-up call to the world.

A young woman investigates her brother’s death in World War I and discovers a long-buried secret in this compelling historical novel set in London during the war and post-war era.