Showing results by author "Lea O'Harra" in All Categories

One cold night in 1983 in a coastal town in Japan a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl disappears on her way home from badminton practice. The local police explore all avenues, but as is often the case, when there are no clues, there are no answers. Decades later, the repercussions of her mysterious disappearance are still being felt in Japan in unspoken secrets and lies and broken lives that are left littered behind.

It’s a hot summer’s day in 1984 when 12-year-old Gilly and her friend Sally find a dead new-born in a shoebox in the cemetery of their tiny town. Deciding to keep their discovery a secret, they bury the body in Gilly’s yard. The results are disastrous. Flowers are mysteriously left on strollers. Two local children disappear and end up dead. A suspect is arrested and confesses, blaming the deaths on the girls’ having taken the dead baby.

In the summer of 1988, beautiful young Kaori Hirakata meets Hiroki Sato. She's from a wealthy, respected family living in a small town in Kyushu while he's a local boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but they fall in love, and she decides to run away with him. Is it a case of love being blind? When Hiroki admits he once belonged to a yakuza gang in Tokyo, Kaori is horrified. She considers breaking up with him but changes her mind after he apologizes and brings her a box of chocolates.