I. J. Parker's gripping historical novels transport the reader to life in eleventh-century Japan in all its colorful, treacherous glory. In Black Arrow, Sugawara Akitada accepts his new post as temporary governor of Echigo, an icy province in the far north famed his hostility towards outsiders. But the snow that threatens to completely isolate the region is the least of its problems, which include a local uprising, a series of brutal murders, and a secret that is as old as the frozen hills and much more dangerous.