The Courtesans’ Feast: A Gothic Vampire Horror Novel of Seventeenth-Century Japan: 1

1638. Along Japan's Nakasendō road, a prosperous pleasure house offers travelers everything they might need: hot baths, fine food, music, silk, discretion, and women trained to make dangerous men feel welcome. What its guests do not know is that the House has survived for generations by keeping a darker appetite under strict control. The courtesans are vampires. Their survival depends on rules: feed carefully, waste nothing, protect the House, and never allow hunger to become chaos. But when powerful guests arrive, old tensions sharpen, blood reserves run low, and the balance holding predator and prey apart begins to fail. Among those trapped inside are a wandering swordsman, a physician who trusts what the body tells him, three reckless gamblers, a widow carrying secrets of her own, and men accustomed to having their authority obeyed. As doors close and bodies begin to accumulate, they must learn the shape of the danger before the House consumes everyone within it. The vampires are not mindless beasts. They are disciplined, intelligent, frightened, loyal, cruel, and hungry. Some will fight to preserve the order that has kept them alive. Others will decide that restraint has already cost too much. And once the rules break, survival will demand more than killing monsters. It will demand choosing what kind of monster to become. The Courtesans' Feast is a historical Gothic vampire novel set in seventeenth-century Japan, blending atmospheric horror, supernatural mystery, intimate bloodshed, and contained survival tension inside a beautiful institution built on secrecy, appetite, and control. Perfect for readers who enjoy dark historical fiction, Gothic horror, morally complex vampires, survival horror, and elegant settings hiding something monstrous.