Five characters, in very different circumstances—from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, to a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city—find out the meanings of dislocation and the desire for more.Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives—formally daring, fierce, but full of pity—delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.

    Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect.

    Is there a plot here? Well, yes and no. Aksyonov (The Steel Bird, The Island of Crimea) offers a narrator/hero named Tolya von Steinbock – a quasi-autobiographical figure who is variously metamorphosed into a scientist, a jazz musician, a sculptor, a writer, a doctor. Through this flexible alter ego, then, Aksyonov can bring in everything – starting with memories of his own childhood in the Siberian prison-camp town of Magadan.

    It is the story of his life which encompasses love, dedication, eccentricity, friendship and overall his discovery of his true love and also the anguish of losing it due to his obstinacy and self-centeredness. It is a repertoire of moments coated with velvetiness of love and bruised by the thorns of betrayal. It highlights the situations which ultimately turns him into a devil, who wants to annihilate the whole world with his impiety, consequences being the least he cares about; and eventually loses his happiness, identity and even himself in this process.I could neither speak in words, nor could ever write it downThe loneliness, the emptiness your absence left behind....Those moments spent in the warmth of your cuddleStill linger in a cruel heart...... in a guilty mind!!!Whenever I dream, I see you so tranquilCan I trace the reason of my going away and getting back never?If by closing my eyes I see you happy sweetheart,I promise I shall close my eyes FOREVER!

    In a deconsecrated church, a young woman is found dead, her mutilated body displayed on the altar for all to see. Captain Alexei Korolev, finally beginning to enjoy the benefits of his success with the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Militia, is asked to investigate. But when he discovers that the victim is an American citizen, the NKVD—the most feared organization in Russia—becomes involved. Soon, Korolev’s every step is under close scrutiny and one false move will mean exile to The Zone, where enemies of the Soviet State, both real and imagined, meet their fate in the frozen camps of the far north.Committed to uncovering the truth behind the gruesome murder, Korolev enters the realm of the Thieves, rulers of Moscow’s underworld. As more bodies are discovered and pressure from above builds, Korolev begins to question who he can trust and who, in a Russia where fear, uncertainty and hunger prevail, are the real criminals. Soon, Korolev will find not only his moral and political ideals threatened, but also his life.William Ryan’s remarkable debut will storm into ten countries in what is sure to be an international publishing event. With Captain Alexei Korolev, William Ryan has given us one of the most compelling detectives in modern literature, a man dogged and humble, a man who will lead us through a fear-choked Russia to find the only thing that can save him or any of us— the truth.

    When a mysterious, charismatic stranger trudges into their snowy village with a frighteningly outlandish story to tell, its balance is shaken to the core.

    Glenn Meade’s electrifying latest novel combines the epic sweep and drama of a heroic quest, the passion and tragedy of Doctor Zhivago, and a majestic cast of characters that will stay with you long after the final pages have been turned. . . . SOMETIMES MYSTERIES ARE NEVER SOLVED. SOMETIMES THERE ARE NO ANSWERS. Dr. Laura Pavlov, an American forensic archaeologist, is about to unravel a mystery that promises to shed light on one of the 20th century’s greatest enigmas. A member of an international team digging on the outskirts of the present-day Russian city of Ekaterinburg, where the Romanov royal family was executed in July 1918, Pavlov discovers a body perfectly preserved in the permafrost of a disused mine shaft. The remains offer dramatic new clues to the disappearance of the Romanovs, and in particular their famous daughter, Princess Anastasia, whose murder has always been in question. Pavlov’s discovery sets her on an unlikely journey to Ireland, where a carefully hidden account of a years-old covert mission is about to change the accepted course of world history and hurl her back into the past—into a maelstrom of deceit, secrets, and lies. Drawn from historical fact, The Romanov Conspiracy is a high-tension story of love and friendship tested by war, and a desperate battle between revenge and redemption, set against one of the most bloody and brutal revolutions in world history.

    The Gambler explores the compulsive nature of gambling, one of Dostoevsky's own vices and a subject he describes with extraordinary acumen and drama. Both works are new translations, specially commissioned for the World's Classics series.

    The much-anticipated poetry chapbook by Sam Pink, author of the cult favorites Person and I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, who the Los Angeles Review of Books called, “Simply one of the best, darkest, funniest, wildest, and [most] touching writers we’ve got.”

    The story of the raid has reverberated in Indian history, but largely during the raj. It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent.In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. These findings also contest the current Hindu religious nationalism that constantly utilises the conventional version of this history.

    With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away—and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together—Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.

    Amongst the evacuees is Dinesh, whose world has contracted to a makeshift camp where time is measured by the shells that fall around him like clockwork. Alienated from family, home, language, and body, he exists in a state of mute acceptance, numb to the violence around him, till he is approached one morning by an old man who makes an unexpected proposal: that Dinesh marry his daughter, Ganga. Marriage, in this world, is an attempt at safety, like the beached fishing boat under which Dinesh huddles during the bombings. As a couple, they would be less likely to be conscripted to fight for the rebels, and less likely to be abused in the case of an army victory. Thrust into this situation of strange intimacy and dependence, Dinesh and Ganga try to come to terms with everything that has happened, hesitantly attempting to awaken to themselves and to one another before the war closes over them once more.Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage is a feat of extraordinary sensitivity and imagination, a meditation on the fundamental elements of human existence—eating, sleeping, washing, touching, speaking—that give us direction and purpose, even as the world around us collapses. Set over the course of a single day and night, this unflinching debut confronts marriage and war, life and death, bestowing on its subjects the highest dignity, however briefly.

    Elegantly weaving together different voices into a striking portrait of a city and its people, The Scatter Here Is Too Great is a tale as vibrant and varied in its characters, passions, and idiosyncrasies as the city itself.

    This is the moment a CIA director most dreads. Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it's drawn, The Director is a maze of double dealing, about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones—and nothing can be trusted.

    There is no school, but their mother teaches them to read and write, and once a month sends the boys on a two-day journey to the bazaar. They are poor, but inside their mud-walled home, the family has stability, love, and routine.When a convoy of armed men arrives in their village one day, their world crumbles. The boys survive and make their way to a small city, where they sleep among other orphans. They learn to beg, and, eventually, they earn work and trust from the local shopkeepers. Ali saves their money and sends Aziz to school at the madrassa, but when US forces invade the country, militants strike back. A bomb explodes in the market, and Ali is brutally injured.In the hospital, Aziz meets an Afghan wearing an American uniform. To save his brother, Aziz must join the Special Lashkar, a US-funded militia. No longer a boy, but not yet a man, he departs for the untamed border. Trapped in a conflict both savage and entirely contrived, Aziz struggles to understand his place. Will he embrace the brutality of war or leave it behind, and risk placing his brother and a young woman he comes to love in jeopardy?Having served five tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, Elliot Ackerman has written a gripping, morally complex debut novel, an astonishing feat of empathy and imagination about boys caught in a deadly conflict.