Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida


Robert Chandler - 2005
    Included are pieces from many of the acknowledged masters of Russian literature - including Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn - alongside tales by long-suppressed figures such as the subversive Kryzhanowsky and the surrealist Shalamov. Whether written in reaction to the cruelty of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy of communism or the torture of the prison camps, they offer a wonderfully wide-ranging and exciting representation of one of the most vital and enduring forms of Russian literature.

Doctor Zhivago


Boris Pasternak - 1957
    One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller.Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.

The Girl in the Basement


Ray Garton - 2010
    But his luck has changed. Now he’s in the Preston house, where he has a budding romance with fellow foster child Lyssa. But something strange is going on in the basement.Maddy is a slow nine-year-old girl who is kept in the basement. Sometimes she talks in a gravelly adult voice. Sometimes she seems to know things about others that she couldn’t possibly know...and predicts things that always come true. And sometimes people from the government come by to spend time with Maddy down in the basement.Maybe Ryan’s luck hasn’t changed as much as he thinks.

The Time-Traveling Texan


Richard Pillsbury - 2020
    Army is challenging. But navigating the wild west of Texas in the 1830s is even harder.Jake Duncan is a Ranger in the U.S. Army and a grad student struggling with his history class. He’s a regular guy—a former football player who loves beer, takeout, and is on the brink of proposing to his girlfriend, Jenny. One day, he stumbles on a gravestone with his name and correct birth date on it, and his life is changed forever.Before long, he leaves a suburban neighborhood of Austin in his pickup and finds himself stuck—alone—in the year 1836, when Texas was a deserted war zone and the future was uncertain. Jake bonds with an escaped slave, Nate, and together they make their way across the wild terrain, encountering Mexican pilgrims, American pioneers, and Native Americans along the way—some of them hostile. His modern weapons help a bit, as does his 21st-century medical training. He helps deliver a baby, saves malaria patients, and treats battle wounds. He meets a tough-as-nails widow named Kate, and they begin to fall for each other. After weeks in the past, Jake isn’t sure he wants to return to 2020. Kate has captured his heart.Will he make it back to 2020 without Kate? Or will Jake decide to stay in the 1800s?A thrilling story that mixes compelling characters with historical fiction, The Time Traveling Texan is an exciting yet intimate portrait of early Texas history. If you like a good cowboy story, passionate romance, and a strange sci-fi twist, you will love The Time Traveling Texan.Explore Texas history with fresh eyes in Richard C. Pillsbury’s debut novel, available in Kindle and paperback.

The Garnet Bracelet, and Other Stories


Aleksandr Kuprin - 1910
    Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938) was Russian novelist and short-story writer. He was an army officer for several years before he resigned to pursue a writing career, and was a friend of Maxim Gorky. He won fame with The Duel (1905), a novel of protest against the Russian military system. In 1909, Yama: The Pit, his novel dealing with prostitution in Odessa, created a sensation. Kuprin left Russia after the revolution but returned in 1937. Some of his best short stories of action and adventure appear in The Garnet Bracelet, originally published in 1917.

The Murderer


Ray Bradbury - 1953
    One man's rebellion against the sensory overload brought on by ubiquitous electronics.

A Retrieved Reformation


O. Henry - 1903
    

Nervous People and Other Satires


Mikhail Zoshchenko - 1963
    Typical targets of Zoshchenko's satire are the Soviet bureaucracy, crowded conditions in communal apartments, marital infidelities and the rapid turnover in marriage partners, and "the petty-bourgeois mode of life, with its adulterous episodes, lying, and similar nonsense." His devices are farcical complications, satiric understatement, humorous anachronisms, and an ironic contrast between high-flown sentiments and the down-to-earth reality of mercenary instincts.Zoshchenko's sharp and original satire offers a marvelous window on Russian life in the 20s and 30s.

K is for Knifeball: An Alphabet of Terrible Advice


Avery Monsen - 2012
    (more than 175,000 copies sold) and in the humorous vein of Go the F**k to Sleep comes a laugh-out-loud collection of bad advice that turns the children's alphabet book on its head. Adorable illustrated characters lead readers down a path of poor decision-making, and alphabetical, rhyming couplets offer terrible life lessons in which O is for opening things with your teeth, F is for setting Daddy's wallet on fire, and R is for Raccoon (but definitely not for rabies). With plenty of playfully disastrous choices lurking around every corner, this compendium of black humor may be terrible for actual children, but it's perfect for the common-senseless child in all adults.

The Compromise


Sergei Dovlatov - 1981
    Based on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues.

A First Course in General Relativity


Bernard F. Schutz - 1985
    This textbook, based on the author's own undergraduate teaching, develops general relativity and its associated mathematics from a minimum of prerequisites, leading to a physical understanding of the theory in some depth. It reinforces this understanding by making a detailed study of the theory's most important applications - neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology - using the most up-to-date astronomical developments. The book is suitable for a one-year course for beginning graduate students or for undergraduates in physics who have studied special relativity, vector calculus, and electrostatics. Graduate students should be able to use the book selectively for half-year courses.

Poems of Akhmatova


Anna Akhmatova - 1962
    The poems are prefaced by a thoughful introduction by the poet Joseph Brodsky, a friend of Akhmatova in her later years.

Oblomov


Ivan Goncharov - 1859
    Stephen Pearl's new translation, the first major English-language publication of Oblomov in more than fifty years, succeeds exquisitely to introduce this astonishing and endearing novel to a new generation of readers.