Grass for His Pillow — Lian Hearn

Praised for its epic scope and descriptive detail, Across the Nightingale Floor, the first book of the Tales of the Otori, was an international bestseller and critical success, named by the London Times as "the most compelling novel to have been published this year." With Grass for His Pillow, Book Two of the Tales of the Otori, we return to the medieval Japan of Hearn's imagination -- a land of harsh beauty and deceptive appearances.

In a complex social hierarchy, amid dissembling clans and fractured allegiances, there is no place for passionate young love. The orphan Takeo has been condemned to work as an assassin -- an enforced occupation that his father sacrificed his own life to escape. Meanwhile, Takeo's beloved Shirakawa Kaede, heir to the Maruyama and alone in the world, must find a way to unify the domain she has inherited, as she fights off the advances of would-be suitors and hopes against fading hope that Takeo will return to her...