Featuring short stories "Shadow Wife," the tale of the vengeful swordsman prodigy Hisama Sakakibara, and "The Crawler," the story of stubborn treasury official Genbei Chitsugi, this masterpiece collection of historical ghost stories depicts the pathos of lower-class samurai who live for and are held captive by the sword.

A mysterious bead and a young woman's dying wish have brought D to the seashore village of Florence-a town that's perpetually stuck in winter. Summer comes to this shore but one week a year and it brings something more than just the warm weather-the sole-surviving Noble comes out of hiding too! That rare bead may hold all the secrets of the Nobility and humans. With such an enticing artifact in his hand (literally!), D is doggedly pursued by the henchmen of the young woman's murderer. These unscrupulous assassins have no qualms using the dead woman's sister as bait to draw out D, but the mysterious Noble has other designs on her. Finally remembering what he has been seeking all these years, the Noble won't let anything get in his way-even a notorious vampire hunter like D!

The Nobility have captured a young Frontierswoman named Tae and held her captive for eight years, and her prison - the remote Castle Gradinia - can only be accessed by those brave (or senseless) enough to cross into the no-man''s-land known as the Outer Frontier. The mysterious "people finder" Granny Viper has been charged with the recovery of the girl...but can she trust her hired escorts, the notoriously shifty Bullow Brothers? In a race across treacherous terrain, it will be up to D to lead the charge and level all enemies on this rescue mission! Vampire Hunter D is famed horror-master Hideyuki Kikuchi''s revolutionary tale of a beautiful Hunter and the war he is destined to wage against the bloodthirsty Nobility! D must intervene when the recapture of a young woman kidnapped by the Nobility is waylaid by a band of deviants whose unparalleled cruelty threatens the very lives of the rescue party! Will D make it across a vast desert and out of harm''s way in time to save the girl?

In a fleeting last breath, a beautiful woman on her deathbed hands a strange gemstone to D and asks that he deliver it to her sister in a remote North Sea fishing village. As D cuts across never-ending expanses of Frontier in search of his seaside destination, he is relentlessly attacked by wave after wave of mercenary and monster...all employed by the man who murdered the young girl. In order to grant a dying wish, D must find a way to keep this priceless jewel out of everyone's covetous reach, and all without sacrificing his own life!

"In a world where even the smallest and most remote village is being terrorized by the monsters that stalk the night, there is a hamlet, prosperous and peaceful, where mortals and vampires have lived in peace for years. It is there that sleeping beauty, Sheavil Schmidt, has slept, neither waking nor aging, for thirty years since first receiving the vampire's immortal kiss. The mysterious Vampire Hunter D is lured to the tranquil oasis by recurrent dreams of the beautiful, undying girl bathed in an eerie blue light and dancing in a ghostly chateau."--Amazon.com.