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Autumn Bridge [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader]
eBook by Dell Publishing
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$14.00 |
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$11.90 |
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10% |
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10% |
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$12.60 |
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eBook Category: Historical Fiction/Historical Fiction
eBook Description:  In the year 1311, in the highest tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle, a beautiful woman sits by the window, watching as enemies gather below and fires spread through the night. As she calmly awaits her fate, she begins to write, carefully setting down on a scroll the secret history of the Okumichi clan ... of the gift of prophecy they share and the extraordinary destiny that awaits them. For six centuries, these remarkable writings lay hidden--until they are uncovered by an American woman, a missionary named Emily Gibson, who arrived in Edo harbor in 1861, in flight from a tragic past. Soon an extraordinary man would enter her life: Lord Genji of the Okumichi clan, a nobleman with a gift of prophecy who must defend his embattled family--and confront forbidden feelings for an outsider in his midst. Emily, too, soon finds herself at a turning point; courted by two westerners, she knows her heart belongs to the one man she cannot have. But Emily has found a mission of her own: translating Genji's ancestral history, losing herself in an epic tale of heroism and forbidden love. For here is the story of Lady Shizuka, the beautiful witch-princess who has enchanted Okumichi men for generations ... of Genji's ancestors, Lord Hironobu and Lord Kiyori, and of the terrible betrayals that befell them ... and of Genji's parents: a wastrel father and his child bride whose tragic love has shaped Genji as a leader and as a man. As Emily sifts through the fragile scrolls, she begins to see threads of her own life woven into the ancient writings. And as past and present collide, a hidden history comes to life, and with it a secret prophecy that has been shrouded for centuries, and may now finally be revealed. Takashi Matsuoka's spellbinding novel is infused with spectacle, intricately woven, magically told. Autumn Bridge is a feast for the senses, a work of truly dazzling storytelling.
eBook Publisher: Dell Publishing/Dell Publishing
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2004
Available eBook Formats [Secure eReader (recommended)/Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT [755 KB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT [730 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More., SECURE EREADER (RECOMMENDED) FORMAT [412 KB]
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN, Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN, MobiPocket Reader ISBN, eReader (recommended) ISBN: 9780440334583
 
"Stretching back and forth through the centuries, Matsuoka weaves a timeless tale of intrigue and romance." -- Booklist
"Matsuoka’s rich, authoritative storytelling makes this an engrossing read." -- Publishers Weekly "Offers one of the most impressive feats of storytelling to come along in years.... told in all the rich and exotic detail that made [Cloud of Sparrows] such a delight." -- San Francisco Chronicle Books
The Wraith
The Great Lord wields a sharp sword, rides a fierce warhorse, commands unruly vassals. He has taken the heads of ten thousand foes. His martial prowess is the marvel of the realm. But did he not enter this world bawling from a woman's womb? Did he not suckle helplessly at a woman's breast? And when the cold stars sparkle like ice in the winter sky, and the depth of eternity chills his heart, for what does he yearn more than a woman's embrace?
Aki-no-hashi
(1311)
1860, cloud of sparrows castle in akaoka domain
Lady Shizuka had not changed in the slightest in all the years Lord Kiyori had known her. Her complexion was as smooth as the finest Ming porcelain, with the perfect pallor of a courtly woman of the inner chamber, unlined by the passage of time, unblemished by exposure to sunlight or hardship, without any telltale signs of inappropriate deeds, thoughts, or feelings. Her eyes, when they were not regarding him--shyly or knowingly or beguilingly, as the case may be--looked off into an imaginary distance, with an expression of imminent pleased surprise, an expression accentuated by her high, plucked eyebrows. Her hair was not arranged into a coiffure of the modern type, with its complexity of folds, stacks, waves, and accessory devices, but simply middle-parted and tied with a light blue ribbon into a loose ponytail at her shoulders, from where it continued to flow down her back in an elegance of lustrous ebony all the way to the floor. Her gowns, too, in polished and crepe silks of contrasting textures, were of the classical type, loosely fitted and layered in complementary shades of blue ranging from the brightness of a high mountain pool to the near black of the evening sky. She was the very picture of a princess of the Era of the Shining Prince. An era, he reminded himself, many centuries past.
Outside this room, the great military might of outsider nations crowded in against Japan. The gigantic steam-powered warships of America, Britain, France, and Russia now freely entered Japanese ports. Aboard those ships were cannons that could hurl explosive shells as big as men far past the shore, even beyond inland mountains and forests, and shatter armies concealed from sight before they were close enough to know who was killing them. The ocean that separated the islands of Japan from the rest of the world was no longer a defense. The navies of the outsiders had hundreds of such smoke-belching, cannon-bearing ships, and those ships could bring more than bombardment from afar. From distant shores, they could carry tens of thousands of outsider troops armed with more cannons, and with handheld firearms as well, and land them on the shores of Japan within a few months. Yet here in this room in the highest tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle, the Japan of old lived. He could pretend, at least for a time, that this was the totality of the world.
She saw him looking at her and smiled. Her expression was simultaneously innocent and conspiratorial. How did she manage it? Even the most brilliant of geishas could rarely blend the two into a single look. Demurely, she lowered her gaze and covered her girlish smile with the wide sleeve of her antique Heian kimono.
"You are embarrassing me, my lord. Is something amiss in my appearance?"
"How can there be?" Lord Kiyori said. "You are and will always be the most perfectly beautiful being in all the realm."
A playful...
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