The Convict's Sword: An Akitada Mystery

The Hell Screen

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 2 mins)
• By I. J. Parker
• Narrated By Roy Vongtama
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

An exotic mystery set in 11th-century Japan....Akitada is on his way to the bedside of his dying mother when bad weather forces him to take refuge in a temple whose central treasure is a brilliantly painted hell screen. Perhaps its violent imagery influences his dreams: that night he is awakened by a terrible scream.

It's only after Akitada returns to his family and a scene of domestic unhappiness and scandal that the significance of that cry becomes clear.

Rashomon Gate

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 1 min)
• By I. J. Parker
• Narrated By Roy Vongtama

Sugawara Akitada is the son of impoverished nobility toiling at a low-level job in the Ministry of Justice. When an old friend, Professor Hirata, asks him to investigate a colleague's blackmail, Akitada takes leave of his stultifying job for a temporary post at the Imperial University. There he finds gossip and rivalry abounding.

Island of Exiles

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 27 mins)
• By I. J. Parker
• Narrated By Roy Vongtama

When the exiled Prince Okisada, the most illustrious prisoner of the penal colony on Sado Island, is poisoned, Akitada is called upon by the emperor's envoys to investigate incognito. Posing as a prisoner, he discovers a deadly conspiracy, only to fall into the hands of brutal guards and disappear. It falls to Tora, Akitada's devoted assistant, to begin his own dangerous search of the island for his lost friend and the truth.

The Cloud Pavilion

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 33 mins)
• By Laura Joh Rowland
• Narrated By Bernadette Dunne

Japan, 1701. A woman is brutally attacked within a bamboo prison as clouds swirl around her head. Meanwhile, at Edo Castle, samurai detective turned chamberlain Sano Ichiro is suspicious of his old rival, Yanagisawa, who has been oddly cooperative since returning from exile.

The Dragon Scroll

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 28 mins)
• By I. J. Parker
• Narrated By Roy Vongtama
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

On Sugawara Akitada's first official assignment as a young government clerk in 11th-century Japan, he is sent from the capital city on a nearly impossible mission to Kazusa to discover why tax convoys are disappearing. In the politically murky world of the Japanese court, he has been set up to fail. However, the resourceful Akitada, his elderly servant, Seimei, and his impudent bodyguard, Tora, are determined to fulfill their mission and discover the truth in a town of dangerous secrets.