用心棒日月抄

Probably my favourite historical novel by my favourite historical novel author. This book is about a samurai who runs away from his clan to Edo after being falsely accused of murder, and becomes a swordsman-for-hire/bodyguard to make enough money to eat. The book alternates stories of bodyguard work with a plot arc about identifying who framed him and gathering evidence to clear himself. Unlike some of the author’s other work, there’s a fair leavening of humour and it’s less downbeat. Language is what I would characterise as medium-ish difficulty (bump it up a bit if you haven't read samurai era fiction before and need to get up to speed on the usual genre vocab and speech patterns). If you like that there are three more in the same series.