Only one woman can save her world from barbarian invasion but to do so will mean sacrificing everything she holds dear—love, loyalty and maybe life itself . . . Japan, and the year is 1853. Growing up among the samurai of the Satsuma Clan, in Japan's deep south, the fiery, beautiful and headstrong Okatsu has - like all the clan's women - been encouraged to be bold, taught to wield the halberd, and to ride a horse. But when she is just seventeen, four black ships appear. Bristling with cannon and manned by strangers who to the Japanese eyes are barbarians, their appearance threatens Japan’s very existence. And turns Okatsu’s world upside down. Chosen by her feudal lord, she has been given a very special role to play. Given a new name—Princess Atsu—and a new destiny, she is the only one who can save the realm. Her journey takes her to Edo Castle, a place so secret that it cannot be marked on any map. There, sequestered in the Women’s Palace - home to three thousand women, and where only one man may enter: the shogun - she seems doomed to live out her days. But beneath the palace's immaculate facade, there are whispers of murders and ghosts. It is here that Atsu must complete her mission and discover one last secret - the secret of the man whose fate is irrevocably linked to hers: the shogun himself . . .

How do you fall in love when your society has no word for it? "The Last Concubine" is an epic love story closely based on historical events, chronicling 19th century Japan's extraordinary change from a medieval to a modern country. This is the story of a shogun, a princess and the three thousand women of the women's palace - all of whom really existed - and of the civil war that brought their way of life to an end ...Japan, 1865: the women's palace in the great city of Edo is a sprawling complex much like a middle-eastern harem.Bristling with intrigue and erotic rivalries, the palace is home to three thousand women and only one man - the young shogun. Sachi, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl, is chosen as his concubine. But Japan is changing. Black Ships have arrived from the West, bringing foreigners eager to add Japan to their colonial empires. As civil war erupts, Sachi flees for her life. Rescued by a rebel warrior, she finds unknown feelings stirring within her; but this is a world in which private passions have no place and there is not even a word for 'love'. Before she dare dream of a life with him, Sachi must unravel the mystery of her own origins - a mystery that encompasses a wrong so terrible that it threatens to destroy her ...From the timeless beauty of the Women's Palace in Edo to bloody battles fought outside its walls, "The Last Concubine" is an epic evocation of a country in revolution, and of a young woman's quest to find out who she really is. Hide

Japan, 1868: the last shogun has been defeated, the age of the emperors is about to begin - and in Japan's frozen north a diehard band of loyalists plans a desperate last stand. Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and very vulnerable.

oday when the summer thrush Came to sing at Heron’s Nest I crossed the Bridge of Dreams. Have decided on the title for my new book: Across a Bridge of Dreams. The ‘bridge of dreams’ is an incredibly resonant concept in Japanese culture – it’s our short human lives, a bit like the Anglo-Saxon concept of human life being like a sparrow flying out of the darkness outside into the Great Hall with its warmth and comfort and almost immediately flying out the other side. In the same way the image of the ‘floating bridge of dreams’ is an image of human life, as insubstantial as a bridge over which we pass from one state of existence to another. In Japanese culture it’s a very famous image. The Floating Bridge of Dreams is the title of the last chapter, Chapter 54, of The Tale of Genji (the world’s first novel, written by a Japanese court lady around 1000AD), though the words are never actually used in the text. To Japanese of that time the words would have immediately evoked the transience of human life. The phrase was echoed in a wonderful poem by Fujiwara Teika (1162 – 1241): On a spring night The floating bridge of dreams Breaks off: Swirling round the mountaintop A cloud drifts into the open sky And in the sonorous opening lines of The Tale of the Heike, the great 14th century Japanese epic: The proud ones last but a little while; they vanish like a spring night’s dream. And it’s the title of a short story by Tanizaki Junichiro, The Bridge of Dreams, which begins with the lines I quoted at the beginning of this blog. Just to say ever since I came across these words and this image I’ve been haunted by them – and wanted to wrote a book evoking that frailty and sense of transience. In fact my new book is a love story, a tale of hopeless love set at the time of the Satsuma rebellion, sort of Romeo and Juliet crossed with The Last Samurai …