The Castle of Kudara — Betty Hale Hyatt

For lovely young Alexandra Lawrence, it was a fearful journey from a peaceful English manor to the violent turmoil of 19th-century Japan. Summoned across the seas by a father whom she barely knew, Alexandra arrived to find him hideously murdered, and herself faced with the mission of finding her kidnapped Oriental half-sister, the beautiful Tamura.

There was no one to help Alexandra but a ruggedly handsome, unprincipled English sea captain. There was no way to avoid danger as she followed a sinister trail of mystery to the forbidding medieval castle of a Japanese war lord. And suddenly there seemed no path of escape as Alexandra realized she was a prisoner in that palace of evil--and that survival might not be worth the terrible price she was being asked to pay....