The Kouga Ninja Scrolls

An epic novel that takes you deeper into the world and history of Basilisk! To resolve a clash over succession, the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa has devised the ultimate contest. Two rival ninja clans, the Kouga and the Iga, will meet in a battle to the death. The victor will rule Japan for the next thousand years. But in the midst of this bloody war, an unlikely romance blooms between Gennosuke of the Kouga clan and Oboro of the Iga clan. Gennosuke and Oboro are the next leaders of their clans and their fates are inextricably bound with that of their families. In the colossal fight, the star-crossed lovers are faced with a fatal choice between true love and destiny. Can romance conquer a four-hundred-year-old rivalry? Or is their love fated to end in death?

OF BLOOD AND DESTINY The titanic battle between the clans rages on. Akeginu and the blinded Oboro of the Iga clan encounter a powerful aristocrat named Ofuku, who will do whatever it takes to make her godson, Takechiyo, the next Shogun. If Ofuku and her troops join forces with the Iga, will the Kouga still have a chance at victory? Meanwhile, the Kouga leader Gennosuke, also blinded, and his comrades–including the shapeshifter Saemon and the deadly seductress Kagerou–embark on a long journey to Sunpu to find out exactly why the truce was dissolved. They will face the fury of the calculating Tenzen and the whirlwind-wielding Koshirou. In the end, who will survive this bloody game of deception and politics?

'A retainer of our domain, Renpeido Chikamatsu Hikonoshin Shigenori, each morning washed his face and hands, dressed himself in Hakama and prayed in front of the kamidana alter ... His prayer was thus: "Please afford me success in war." He kept to this routine all through his life.' Through patient and scholarly detective work, Antony Cummins and the Historical Ninjutsu Research Team have unearthed a Shinobi treasure. The 18th-century military historian Chikamatsu recorded the oral traditions of the Ninja and passed on those skills in lectures he gave at his Renpeido school of war in Owari domain during the early 1700s. Chikamatsu wrote specifically about the Shinobi of Iga and Koka, regions from which warriors were hired all over the land in the days of war. The lost scrolls are filled with unknown Shinobi teachings, skills that include infiltration, assassination, explosives, magic and commando tactics, including an in depth commentary on Sun Tzu's famous 13th chapter, 'The Use of Spies'.

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN With only three ninja remaining on each side, the battle between the Iga and the Kouga clans is nearing its bloody end. Believing he has slain Yakushiji Tenzen, shape-shifter Saemon Kisaragi morphs into Tenzen’s body and infiltrates Iga territory. But what Saemon doesn’t know is that Tnezen is an immortal ninja, and that he has his own plan to dispose of Saemon and the Kouga clan. Meanwhile, Oboro, leader of the Iga clan, has sworn that she will die rather than fight against her lover, Gennosuke. Every death brings these two star-crossed lovers closer to confronting each other on the battlefield at last!

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN With only three ninja remaining on each side, the battle between the Iga and the Kouga clans is nearing its bloody end. Believing he has slain Yakushiji Tenzen, shape-shifter Saemon Kisaragi morphs into Tenzen’s body and infiltrates Iga territory. But what Saemon doesn’t know is that Tnezen is an immortal ninja, and that he has his own plan to dispose of Saemon and the Kouga clan. Meanwhile, Oboro, leader of the Iga clan, has sworn that she will die rather than fight against her lover, Gennosuke. Every death brings these two star-crossed lovers closer to confronting each other on the battlefield at last! From the Trade Paperback edition.

"In an old Japan that never was, a war between two feuding ninja clans is about to begin. The ninja wield awesome and deadly supernatural powers, which will only make the battle all the more desperate. Ten champions from each clan will meet in a fight to the death - with the victor ruling Japan for the next thousand years. But when the son of one clan meets the daughter of the other, they fall in love. Will their forbidden love end the war or drive the clans into their next final battle?

A deeply engrossing, philosophical novel by a rising Estonian literary star. Wrapped into his long coat against the incessant rain and accompanied by a strange parrot, the young Dutch student Laurentius arrives in Estonia on an icy day at the end of the seventeenth century. On the run from a dark past and suspected of heresy, he has fled to Tartu, 'The City of the Muses', to study at the famous university. Laurentius has been searching obsessively for a cure for the mysterious melancholy which torments him, and is desperate to understand where the soul comes from, and how it relates to the body. But the more he searches, the more he is attracted to the world of instinct, superstition and magic of the peasants in the surrounding countryside. A world which he knew as a child, but which now persecutes him in dreams and visions which increasingly blur with reality. In this astonishingly atmospheric novel, Friedenthal enters the bowels of Shakespeare's century to tell the story of anguished modernity, and of the advent of the Age of Enlightenment - while medicine is still progressing on the lines of humours, fears and alchemy, and the dark North dreams of radient antiquity, of symposia in Mediterranean gardens among the sweet hum of the bees - the birds of the muses, the souls of poets.

Thanks to the machinations of the Ieyasu Tokugawa, the age-old truce between the Kouga and the Iga clans is no more–and now a fight to the death will decide which clan reigns supreme. Oboro has blinded herself in order to avoid having to kill Gennosuke, her lover and her rival. Meanwhile, Gennosuke has urged the Iga clan to join him on a journey to Sunpu to find out the real motives behind Ieyasu Tokugawa’s orders to fight. But the Iga has other plans. The hirsute Nenki and the butterfly-wielding Hotarubi rush to assassinate Gennosuke, while Tenzen has sinister intentions for a defenseless Oboro. The epic battle of blood and betrayal continues!