Book picks similar to
The Raid by Leo Tolstoy


classics
fiction
russian-literature
russian-lit

Spring in Fialta


Vladimir Nabokov - 1956
    Шигаева (Pamyati L.I. Shigaeva); English translation: In the Memory of L.I. Shigaeva (1934)• Посещение музея (Poseshchenie muzeya); English translation: The Visit to the Museum (1931)• Набор (Nabor); English translation: Recruiting (1935)• Лик (Lik); English translation: Lik (1939)• Истребление тиранов (Istreblenie tiranov); English translation: Tyrants Destroyed (1938)• Василий Шишков (Vasiliy Shishkov); English translation: Vasiliy Shishkov (1939)• Адмиралтейская игла (Admiralteyskaya igla); English translation: The Admiralty Spire (1933)• Облако, озеро, башня (Oblako, ozero, bashnya); English translation: Cloud, Castle, Lake (1937)• Уста к устам (Usta k ustam); English translation: Lips to Lips (1932)'Spring in Fialta is cloudy and dull'. With his senses wide open, Victor wanders the streets. He meets Nina. Again. For fifteen years, their fleeting, chance encounters have made Nina a faint but constant presence in the margins of his life. As they happen upon one another once again, his mind wanders back into the past and relives each brief memory: their kiss in Russia, when she met his wife, when he met her husband, their affair in Paris. Each time she captivated him, each time she seemed to almost forget him, each time he noticed a lurking sense of apprehension that began to grow.

The Body Snatcher


Robert Louis Stevenson - 1884
    Jekyll and Mr. HydeMedical school students Fettes and Macfarlane are charged with the unenviable task of receiving and paying for the institution’s research cadavers. When Fettes recognizes the dead body of a woman he saw alive and well just the day before, he suspects murder. Macfarlane, however, insists that the authorities would never believe they had nothing to do with her death. Reluctantly, Fettes agrees to keep quiet, but soon regrets his decision when another familiar corpse turns up—and takes on a life of its own.

The Gold Bug [+ The Sphinx + William Wilson]


Edgar Allan Poe - 1843
    Yet when Legrand's conviction fails to waiver, they set off on a bizarre journey, accompanied by Jupiter, Legrand's loyal and equally skeptical servant. What follows is a strange tale of coded messages, hidden treasure, and uncanny prophecy that will both enthrall and baffle even the most perceptive readers.Part horror story, part detective fiction, The Gold Bug is an ingenious tale bearing all the hallmarks of Poe's extraordinary narrative skill. It is presented here with The Sphinx, a similarly themed and equally disturbing short story. Wonderfully versatile as an author and best known for his tales of terror and the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) holds a venerable place in the history of American literature.This edition contains the following short stories:- The Gold Bug- The Sphinx- William Wilson.

Diaboliad


Mikhail Bulgakov - 1925
    Full of invention, they display Bulgakov's breathtaking stylistic range, moving at dizzying speed from grotesque satire to science fiction, from the plainest realism to the most madcap of fantasies. Diaboliad is a wonderful introduction to literature's most uncategorisable and subversive genius.

Love in the Night (Greetings Book)


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1925
    Features a full-color foil binding attractive enough to leave unwrapped, an inscribed removable bookmark, ribbon tie, and delicate full-color illustrations--all enhancing a classic and enduring short story.

For The Good Of The Cause


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1964
    Solzhenitsyn presents the conflicts between right and wrong, between the freedom of the individual and the harshness of the system with absolute sincerity and conviction.

Humorous Stories and Sketches


Mark Twain - 1870
    This collection of eight stories and sketches, among them the celebrated classic "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," shows the great humorist at the top of his form.Also included here are "Journalism in Tennessee," in which a novice newspaperman is shown the "correct way" to report a news story; "About Barbers," a delightful account of every barbershop customer's worst fear; "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," Twain's hilarious savaging of that author's style; and four more: "A Literary Nightmare," "The Stolen White Elephant," "The Private History of a Campaign that Failed," and "How to Tell a Story."Delightfully entertaining, these charming pieces will find an appreciative audience among students, general readers, and lovers of classic American humor.

The Secret Sharer


Joseph Conrad - 1910
    A mysterious night-swimmer climbs aboard, and, in keeping the presence of this fugitive a secret, the skipper risks both his captaincy and the safety of his ship. A test of nerve in the Gulf of Siam ensues.

The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays


Vasily Grossman - 1987
    The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life. Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.

The Minister's Black Veil


Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1836
    The old people of the village came stooping along the street. Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hoopers door. The first glimpse of the clergymans figure was the signal for the bell to cease its summons.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge


Ambrose Bierce - 1890
    A noose is tied around his neck. In a moment he will meet his fate: DEATH BY HANGING. There is no escape. Or is there? Find out in . . . An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Kolyma Tales


Varlam Shalamov - 1966
    Shalamov himself spent seventeen years there, and in these stories he vividly captures the lives of ordinary people caught up in terrible circumstances, whose hopes and plans extended to further than a few hours. This new enlarged edition combines two collections previously published in the United States as Kolyma Tales and Graphite.

The Yellow Wall-Paper


Charlotte Perkins Gilman - 1892
    This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband's controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless.

A White Heron


Sarah Orne Jewett - 1886
    A friend to birds and animals, it is only when she is befriended by a young male ornithologist that Sylvia comes head on with conflicts over value systems and loyalties. The resolution of this dilemma is skillfully wrought, revealing the complexity of the decision making-process and the ethical conundrum that will save, or destroy, the earth.

The Wall


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1939
    Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace--their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail. And as the morning draws inexorably closer, the men cross the psychological wall between life and death, long before the first shot rings out.This brilliant snapshot of life in anguish is the perfect introduction to a collection of stories where the neurosis of the modern world is mirrored in the lives of the people that inhabit it.