Lian Hearn books

Anthologies

Children of the Otori Reading Order

Grass For His Pillow Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Tales of the Otori Reading Order

The Tale of Shikanoko Reading Order

Lian Hearn is the pen name of Gillian Rubinstein, who was born in 1942 in Hertfordshire, England. She read Modern Languages at Oxford and worked as an editor and film critic before moving to Australia in 1973. Her lifelong interest in Japan, where she has lived and whose language she speaks, led her to write historical fantasy set in a world modeled on feudal Japan.

Her best-known work is the Tales of the Otori series, beginning with Across the Nightingale Floor (2002). The series has sold over four million copies worldwide and been translated into nearly forty languages. It follows a young man named Takeo who is caught between rival clans in a country torn by war and political intrigue. Hearn later expanded the setting with The Tale of Shikanoko, set three hundred years before the Otori stories, and the Children of the Otori sequence. She has also written standalone novels including Blossoms and Shadows, a historical novel set during the Meiji period.