One murky night in 1816, on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron, famed English poet, challenged his friends to a contest--to write a ghost story. The assembled groupincluded the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; his lover (and future wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; Mary's stepsister Claire Claremont; and Byron's physician, John William Polidori. The famous result was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a workthat has retained its hold on the popular imagination for almost two centuries. Less well-known was the curious Polidori's contribution: the first vampire novel. And theevening begat a curse, too: Within a few years of Frankenstein's publication, nearly all of those involved met untimely deaths. Drawing upon letters, rarely tapped archives, and their own magisterial rereading of Frankenstein itself, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler have crafted a rip-roaring tale of obsession and creation.

When fourteen-year-old samurai apprentice Seikei is sent on a mission by the shogun, he believes it to be a simple one: convince the fourteen-year-old emperor to resume his ceremonial duties. But then the emperor is kidnapped, and Seikei finds himself in the middle of an elaborate plot to overthrow the shogun. With the help of a mysterious warrior, he must rescue the emperor before the sacred sword-said to be unbeatable in battle-falls into the wrong hands. Seikei knows he must succeed, or bloodshed will stain the land.