[share_ebook] Beneath an Opal Moon

With writing credits for over 300 songs and 30 film scores, Kuni Murai is one of the world's preeminent modern composers. Born in Tokyo in 1945, at the crest of postwar Japan, Murai attended Keiō University, graduating and debuting as a composer in 1967. Over the next five decades, Murai would become synonymous with hits; most notably “Tsubasa Wo Kudasai” (Wings To Fly), a near-ubiquitous song published in school music books across Japan and covered by hundreds of artists around the world, and “Niji to yuki no barādo” (Ballad Of Rainbow And Snow), the latter the theme song for the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, as well as equally impressive scores for film.

Welcome, weary travellers. Come close, and gather to the fire. This is a time for tales old and new, told by only the light of the pale moon as we wait for the crow of the cockerel and the dawning of another day. Come close, and listen to the tale I will tell, one full of magic and mystery. You see, not far from this fire there is a path, and not far from that path there is a field, and not far from that field there is a forest. A forest so tall the trees seem to touch the sky, a forest so deep it seems to stretch all of Christendom, a forest so green and lush that it seems to whisper to you with its very leaves. Everyone knows that a forest is a place of Magicks; a place of transformation and treachery; of lovesick wandering and charmed romance. In the woods, all are equal: prince and peasant boy, it is all the same to the trees and those who live amongst them.

London, 1817: Beneath a silent moon, a stranger steals into London, bound to complete a grim task that began in the shadows of the past…. On that same evening, amid the splendor of Glenister House, London's haut ton celebrates, still flush with victory in the Napoleonic Wars. Among the revelers are Mélanie and Charles Fraser—he, a former spy connected to the most powerful families in Britain, and she his exquisite bride, who has charmed all of society.

Europa - an icy moon of Jupiter 485 million miles away from Earth - may be our best hope for finding alien life in our solar system. Everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life. What does this mean for the search for life beyond Earth? Scientists believe that on Europa there is a liquid ocean buried beneath its icy crust. To find out if this alien ocean holds life, well need to get there, penetrate the ice shell, and navigate in an alien sea. In this episode of Explorer, well plunge headlong into the challenges of discovery on an alien world.