William D Wood

In dozens of hellish concentration camps scattered throughout Germany, thousands of emaciated men and women are kept ignorant of these events. With over 14 million already murdered in the gas chambers, the Nazis are all too aware the remaining survivors could become a serious liability, all of them living proof of their barbaric Holocaust. Into one of these death camps comes a man named Aaron. Unlike the hopeless, starving men around him, he is strangely aloof and detached from the living nightmare,

Recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, it has been called Endo's supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century's finest novels". Considered controversial ever since its first publication, it tackles the thorniest religious issues of belief and faith head on. A novel of historical fiction, it is the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to seventeenth century Japan, who endured persecution that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion.

Aces and eights, a dead man's hand. Life and death dealt over a shuffle of a deck. Stakes from dollar bills to souls tossed into the center of the table. And sitting around, waiting for the turn of a card, to raise, check, bet, or fold, are rogues, scoundrels, dames, and sharps. Every single one betting their last breath on the hand they hold.