Showing results by narrator "Maura Vaughn" in All Categories

Across the Ages, the Headmistresses of Three Very Unusual Schools (along with Their Very Unusual Students) Share a Meal. Lady Mochizuki Chiyome plays host to two of the only women who can understand why she teaches young women to do very unladylike things. Like her, Locusta the Poisoner and Ma Mandelbaum run schools for very particular students gifted with very particular talents.

After a century of brutal civil war has torn Japan apart, Lady Mochizuki Chiyome gathers together the most unlikely army imaginable to unite the empire and bring an end to the bloodshed: an army of girls clad in the red and white garb of miko, shrine maidens. Together, these girls work as spies, as bodyguards, as assassins — going where no soldier could go, doing what no soldier could do.

Mochizuki Chiyome wants someone dead...and someone wants to serve her. At a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant.

Lady Mochizuki Chiyome is mired in grief. Recently widowed by Japan's endless civil war, she has become tired of mourning, tired of wearing the white robes that are the traditional Japanese garb of grief. On the road, she encounters two young women who open her eyes to a whole new purpose in life -- and a new way to end Japan's century of bloodshed.

Kano Murasaki, called Risuko, is a young, fatherless girl, more comfortable climbing trees than down on the ground. Yet she finds herself enmeshed in a game where the board is the whole nation of Japan, where the pieces are armies moved by scheming lords, and a single girl couldn't possibly have the power to change the outcome. Or could she?