Goddess Chronicle - Tapa dura

Raised in her beautiful sister's shadow on a mystical island, headstrong Namima is ordained to guide the spirits of the dead to the underworld while her sister becomes her family's next oracle, a fate that guides her from a first experience of love to a scalding betrayal that compels her pursuit of vengeance. By the award-winning author of Out.

Natsuo Kirino (pen name of Mariko Hashioka) is a prize-winning Japanese novelist and prolific writer, most famous for her 1998 novel, Out, which received the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction (Japan’s top mystery award) and was a finalist (in translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award. Four of her novels have been translated into English: Out, Grotesque, Real World and What Remains. Her early work includes romances and stories for manga.

Rebecca L. Copeland, professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from Columbia University in 1986. Her published works include The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), co-edited with Dr. Melek Ortabasi; Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing (2006); The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001), co-edited with Dr. Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen; Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan (2000); and The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo (1992). She has also translated the works of Kirino Natsuo, Uno Chiyo, and Hirabayashi Taiko, among others.