The Japanese Sword

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Wedding photos capture a lot of things they shouldn’t. Including Susan’s husband Russell necking with one of his colleagues. Susan goes ahead with her plans for Russell’s birthday, plans that include a Japanese sword he’s always wanted. Only this sword possesses something extra—a talent for revenge.

“A compelling story of female honour, and a housewife dealing the humiliating revelation of her husband's infidelity, samurai-style.”
—Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476358208

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

Book preview

The Japanese Sword

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

With Complete Bonus Story

Present

Copyright Information

The Japanese Sword

Copyright © 2009 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Swordplay, edited by Denise Little, Daw Books, 2009

Present

Copyright © 2002 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories, Five Star Publishing, 2002

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2012 by WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © by Pixattitude/Dreamstime, Tomasz Boinski/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Table of Contents

The Japanese Sword

Present

(Bonus Story)

Copyright Information

About the Author

The Japanese Sword

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Russell liked all things Japanese. So it should probably have come as no surprise that he would fall for Kuri Tsunoda. She was everything that Susan was not.

Kuri Tsunoda was petite.

She was pretty.

And she was Japanese. A professor of Ancient Japanese Literature, she became—just that year—a full professor at the university.

Russell was the head of Asian Studies, as he told anyone he met—cabbies, waitresses, and the occasional colleague from a different school. He’d worked his way up from Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies into creating an entire department, and, Susan thought, he never gave credit where credit was due.

Credit, she knew, belonged to Shogun. The book appeared in the late 1970s and became a bestseller, but the 1980s miniseries took the Department of Asian Studies from a three-man team—one professor (Russell) handling all things Japanese, another handling all things Chinese, and the last handling anything else he could label Asian—to a department with over 20 professors and at least two visiting professors. Russell became the head due to longevity, not any particular aptitude for administration.

He had hired Kuri Tsunoda. Her classes focused on Ancient Japanese literature of the Heian Period. Oddly enough, most of that literature was written by women—and even more oddly (or maybe it wasn’t odd at all) most of those books dealt with extra-marital affairs.

Susan had heard that Kuri was the most dynamic professor on campus. Her classes went from 20 the first semester to 100 the second. She needed two graduate assistants to help her with the workload, and by the end of it all, she