Girl in a Box

In early twentieth century Japan, women have few rights. Yet one precocious poet—a brooding daughter, locked in her room at night by protective parents—runs away from home to live a life of her choosing. 

She falls in love with a fellow poet and follows him across Siberia to Paris, where they witness the last days of the Belle Epoque. She perseveres through poverty, back-to-back pregnancies, infidelity, earthquake and fire, to become a name every Japanese schoolchild knows today as a pioneering feminist poet and the first person to translate the classical Tale of Genjiinto modern Japanese. In her single-minded dedication to her art, she inflicts wounds on a daughter that echo from her own childhood. She sets out to make amends, knowing it may be too late. 

Based on the life of poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and filled with original translations of her poetry, Girl in a Box will ignite the discussion about the female artist’s challenge to create while juggling family, career, and personal freedom. Historical fiction at its best.

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The Samurai’s Octopus

It’s the year 1784 and the shōgun rules with an iron fist…except within the walled pleasure quarter of Yoshiwara. Inside the Great Gate, samurai law does not apply and it’s women who pull the strings, but beneath the surface runs a deadly current of greed, deception…and murder.

Takahisa Takeda will never forgive the first shōgun for rewarding his ancestor’s loyalty with more honor than land. He’s the head of a venerable samurai family who can barely make ends meet, until the night he witnesses a terrible crime and turns tragedy into gold.

Birdie is just a child when she’s chosen to serve Yoshiwara’s number one courtesan and given a new name at the House of Treasures. Like every girl growing up in the pleasure quarter, she longs to become one of the beauties strutting down the promenade under a crimson parasol. But the higher she climbs, the more she realizes those she trusts with her life might also betray her in a heartbeat.

Caught between two powerful men whose futures hinge on that long-ago murder, Birdie’s only way out is to discover why the victim had to die, and hunt down a witness whose life depends on not being found.

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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly Japanagram newsletter, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had