by Curtis Piper (Author)

The Shogun's Treasure *** A Deadly Search *** A Buried Secret

In the final days of the Shogunate, as civil war threatens to engulf Japan, the Shogun's Naval and Finance Minister takes a desperate action: he reportedly hides a massive cache of gold in the remote north of the main island to keep it from the rebels. Captured and beheaded, his secret vanishes, and historians dismiss it as a fanciful myth. But they are wrong. Very wrong.

To turn the tide of war, a friend of the Shogun enlists Tomita Yuki, a young samurai, to travel to America and purchase 10,000 Spencer repeating rifles-the same weapons used by Union forces in the Civil War. At his side: Major Butler, a retired U.S. Army officer who was a Shogunate military advisor, and Mary, Butler's bold and determined niece. But a deadly betrayal threatens everything, and their mission spirals into disaster, and their story disappears-until more than a century and a half later.

In modern-day California, insurance fraud detective Parker West discovers Tomita Yuki's Japanese diary in his late parents' attic. He also finds a gleaming 1858 U.S. $20 gold coin.

Drawn into a mystery spanning continents and over 150 years, Parker teams up with Japanese-American historian Jason Tanaka and his brilliant niece, Terry. Together, they follow Yuki's elusive clues-deadly clues.

The gold is real. The danger is present. And the past is anything but buried.

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