One murky night in 1816, on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron, famed English poet, challenged his friends to a contest--to write a ghost story. The assembled group included the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; his lover (and future wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; Mary's stepsister Claire Claremon...
While attempting to solve the mystery of a stolen jewel, Seikei, a merchant's son who longs to be a samurai, joins a group of kabuki actors in eighteenth-century Japan.
Synopsis:During the period of Yoshimune, the 8th shogun of the Tokugawa family, Judge Ooka was well respected for his wise and honest decisions and regarded as the Sherlock Holmes of Japan. Seikei was born to a merchant family, but had won the Judge's respect when he voluntarily assisted him so...
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever! We look on the past, And stare aghast At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, Of hopes which thou andI beguiled To death on life’s dark river. —“Lines,” Percy Shelley, 1817, published 1824 AFTER THE BIRTHof the Shell...
They had purchased one-way tickets, for they planned to return by automobile. Not just any automobile either. They had scouted the area in daylight, looking at the shiny new cars parked outside the grand houses, before selecting one that belonged to a family named Normand. It was a Delaunay-Belle...