Hadji Murád


Leo Tolstoy - 1912
    During this war a great Avar chieftain, Hadji Murád, broke with the Chechen leader Shamil and fled to the Russians for safety. Months later, while attempting to rescue his family from Shamil’s prison, Hadji Murád was pursued by those he had betrayed and, after fighting the most heroic battle of his life, was killed.Tolstoy, witness to many of the events leading to Hadji Murád’s death, set down this story with painstaking accuracy to preserve for future generations the horror, nobility, and destruction inherent in war.

The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War


Åsne Seierstad - 2007
    A foreign correspondent in Moscow at the time, Åsne Seierstad traveled regularly to Chechnya to report on the war, describing its affects on those trying to live their daily lives amidst violence.In the following decade, Seierstad became an internationally renowned reporter and author, traveling to the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other war-torn regions. But she never lost sight of this conflict that had initially inspired her career. Over the course of a decade, she watched as Russia ruthlessly suppressed an Islamic rebellion in two bloody wars and as Chechnya evolved into one of the flashpoints in a world now focused on the threat of international terrorism.In 2006, Seierstad finally returned to Chechnya, traveling in secret and under the constant threat of danger. In a broken and devastated society she lived with orphans, the wounded, the lost. And she lived with the children of Grozny, those who will shape the country's future. She asks the question: What happens to a child who grows up surrounded by war and accustomed to violence?A compelling, intimate, and often heartbreaking portrait of Chechnya today, The Angel of Grozny is a vivid account of a land's violent history and its ongoing battle for freedom.

50 Wittiest Tales Of Birbal


Clifford Sawhney
    His encounters at Emperor Akbar`s Court are legendary.Birbal`s close friendship with Akbar earned him many enemies. Birbal survived countless murder attempts.Numerous stories have been spun around these plots.These stories were passed on from generation to generation. And the legend of Birbal grew.Unicorn Books presents 50 Birbal stories in this collection for children.Some Interesting Tales:*Akbar and Birbal`s First Meeting*Pulling the Emperor`s Whiskers*The Egg Trick*Stone Flowers versus Real ones*How to retrieve a ring*Unlucky ProfessionsAbout the author:Clifford Sawhney, has over 20 years experience in the print media, corporate communications and publishing industry.His writings have appeared in the Hindustan Times, Discover India, Life Positive, Parade, Parenting, Clarity, Debonair, Hotel & Food Service, Rave, e-Commerce, The Diplomatist, Training & Management and other periodicals.This book is his second venture for Unicorn Books after The Funniest Tales of Mullah Nasruddin.

The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus


Lesley Blanch - 1960
    During the Great Caucasus War of 1834-1859, the warring mountain tribes of Daghestan and Chechnya united under the charismatic leadership of the Muslim chieftain Imam Shamyl, the "Lion of Daghestan", and held at bay the invading Russian army for nearly 25 years. Lesley Blanch vividly recounts the epic story of their heroic and bloody struggle for freedom and the life of a man still legendary in the Caucasus.

The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy


Masha Gessen - 2015
     The facts of the tragedy are established: On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs fashioned from pressure cookers exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding 264 others. The elder of the brothers suspected of committing this atrocity, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in the ensuing manhunt; Dzhokhar will stand trial in January 2015. What we don’t know is why. How did such a nightmare come to pass?This is a probing and powerful story of dislocation, and the longing for clarity and identity that can reach the point of combustion. Bestselling Russian-American author Masha Gessen is uniquely endowed with the background, access, and talent to tell it. She explains who the brothers were and how they came to do what they appear to have done. From their displaced beginnings, as descendants of ethnic Chechens deported to Central Asia in the Stalin era, Gessen follows them as they are displaced again, from strife-ridden Kyrgyzstan to war-torn Dagestan, and then, as émigrés to the United States, into an utterly disorienting new world. Most crucially, she reconstructs the struggle between assimilation and alienation that ensued for each of the brothers, fueling their apparent metamorphosis into a new breed of homegrown terrorist, with their feet on American soil but their loyalties elsewhere—a split in identity that seems to have incubated a deadly sense of mission. Like Dave Cullen’s Columbine, this will be the enduring account of an indelible tragedy.

Is Journalism Worth Dying For?: Final Dispatches


Anna Politkovskaya - 2007
    Is Journalism Worth Dying For? is a long-awaited collection of her final writing.Beginning with a brief introduction by the author about her pariah status, the book contains essays that characterize the self-effacing Politkovskaya more fully than she allowed in her other books. From deeply personal statements about the nature of journalism, to horrendous reports from Chechnya, to sensitive pieces of memoir, to, finally, the first translation of the series of investigative reports that Politkovskaya was working on at the time of her murder—pieces many believe led to her assassination.Elsewhere, there are illuminating accounts of encounters with leaders including Lionel Jospin, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and such exiled figures as Boris Berezovsky, Akhmed Zakaev,  Vladimir Bukovsky. Additional sections collect Politkovskaya’s non-political writing, revealing her delightful wit, deep humanity, and willingness to engage with the unfamiliar, as well as her deep regrets about the fate of Russia.

Here Comes the Messiah!


Dina Rubina - 2000
    The novel is filled with people claiming to be the Messiah, swindlers and the swindled, Jewish and Christian pilgrims, homosexuals, journalists, Holocaust survivors, Palestinian Arabs, children, and pets—a story told with as much humor as pathos.Dina Rubina lives in Ma’aleh Adumim, Israel. She is the author of two other long novels. Her work has been translated into 12 languages, and a three-volume collection of her work in Russian is forthcoming.Daniel M. Jaffe is a fiction writer and translator of Russian literature.

The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life


Tom Reiss - 2005
    Born in 1905 to a wealthy family in the oil-boom city of Baku, at the edge of the czarist empire, Lev escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. He found refuge in Germany, where, writing under the names Essad Bey and Kurban Said, his remarkable books about Islam, desert adventures, and global revolution, became celebrated across fascist Europe. His enduring masterpiece, Ali and Nino–a story of love across ethnic and religious boundaries, published on the eve of the Holocaust–is still in print today.But Lev's life grew wilder than his wildest stories. He married an international heiress who had no idea of his true identity–until she divorced him in a tabloid scandal. His closest friend in New York, George Sylvester Viereck–also a friend of both Freud's and Einstein's–was arrested as the leading Nazi agent in the United States. Lev was invited to be Mussolini's official biographer–until the Fascists discovered his "true" identity. Under house arrest in the Amalfi cliff town of Positano, Lev wrote his last book–discovered in a half a dozen notebooks never before read by anyone–helped by a mysterious half-German salon hostess, an Algerian weapons-smuggler, and the poet Ezra Pound. Tom Reiss spent five years tracking down secret police records, love letters, diaries, and the deathbed notebooks. Beginning with a yearlong investigation for The New Yorker, he pursued Lev's story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal, and sometimes as heartbreaking, as his subject's life. Reiss's quest for the truth buffets him from one weird character to the next: from the last heir of the Ottoman throne to a rock opera-composing baroness in an Austrian castle, to an aging starlet in a Hollywood bungalow full of cats and turtles.As he tracks down the pieces of Lev Nussimbaum's deliberately obscured life, Reiss discovers a series of shadowy worlds–of European pan-Islamists, nihilist assassins, anti-Nazi book smugglers, Baku oil barons, Jewish Orientalists–that have also been forgotten. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth century–of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism and terrorism. Written with grace and infused with wonder, The Orientalist is an astonishing book.

One Soldier's War In Chechnya


Arkady Babchenko - 2006
    An excerpt of the book was hailed by Tibor Fisher in the Guardian as “right up there with Catch-22 and Michael Herr’s Dispatches,” and the book won Russia’s inaugural Debut Prize, which recognizes authors who write “despite, not because of, their life circumstances.” In 1995, Arkady Babchenko was an eighteen-year-old law student in Moscow when he was drafted into the Russian army and sent to Chechnya. It was the beginning of a torturous journey from naïve conscript to hardened soldier that took Babchenko from the front lines of the first Chechen War in 1995 to the second in 1999. He fought in major cities and tiny hamlets, from the bombed-out streets of Grozny to anonymous mountain villages. Babchenko takes the raw and mundane realities of war—the constant cold, hunger, exhaustion, filth, and terror—and twists it into compelling, haunting, and eerily elegant prose. Acclaimed by reviewers around the world, this is a devastating first-person account of war by an extraordinary storyteller.

If It Wasn't For Tony


Anna Black - 2013
    But as usual her promise to herself is broken, because it was impossible for her not to fall heart first for TONY. Things developed quickly, but then their whirlwind romance suddenly comes to a halt when TONY decides things are too heavy for him and he wants space. After he moves out, he doesn't move on and JOCELYN allows him to play the in and out game, until she meets BRIAN. Ready to finally let TONY go and get him out of her system, she cuts the cord, but finds herself in a horrible situation in the end, all because of TONY.

She Fell For A Boss: An Urban Love Tale


K.C. Mills - 2017
    After one conversation with Miego, she is hooked. There is something about him that won't let her walk away. Despite the fact that he is a walking God, his arrogant and brusque demeanor are a little hard to take. Miego says and does what he wants and offers no apologies for it. Even with all that, Yamiah has to have him, regardless of the fact that it could put both her life and his in danger. Having a child with Black, who is ruthless and unforgiving, complicates things. In his eyes, Yamiah is his possession. Black isn't the type of man who is willing to share, and because of who he is, he doesn't have to. His name alone carries weight, and his money gives him a free pass with the cops. Bottom line, Black does what he wants, including control Yami's life. Fresh out of lock up from having trusted the wrong people, Miego realizes that he needs a change. Even though he claims he's done, the streets are all he knows, so he steps right back into the role he left. Once he encounters Yami, he doesn't think twice about walking away from Kia who had scorned him once. Miego is not the type to offer second chances, so when he makes that decision, he doesn't look back, leaving Kia to question what she thought they had. Getting back into the game is working out to be a lot easier than planned since Train is right there to offer the deal of a lifetime, but staying under the radar might be a little complicated since Miego's past is still lurking in the shadows. Regardless of any obstacles, he is going to make it happen. Once a boss always a boss. Miego always gets what he wants, and right now that's his throne back, and the girl of his dreams. He is more than willing to take out anyone who thinks they will get in his way.

The Connect's Wife 5: The Connect's Wife 5 Series


Nako - 2015
    Farren skates her way to the top of The Cartel with only one mission on her mind– KILL. There is one person whose blood she wants on her hands, and it’s not who you think it is… In The Connect’s Wife V, be prepared to go through a plethora of emotions as this epic journey comes to an end.

The Rites of Love


Vladimir Megré - 2006
    In powerful poetic prose, Megre describes their ancient way of life, grounded in love and non-violence, and shows the potential for this same approach to life today. Through one family s story, he portrays the radiant world of the ancient Russian Vedic civilization, the drama of its destruction, and its rebirth in our present time.

Capone and Capri 2: A Bad Boy Romance


Jessica N. Watkins - 2017
     Once the crew finds out who the victim is, complete mayhem begins to unfold and the tangled web of messy drama starts to weave. Trust is damaged, bonds are broken, and love disintegrates into hate. Now that Capone knows who Capri's past consists of, he feels as if he has been sleeping with the other side and walks away from her for good with spews of hateful words and threats that Capri perceives as unforgivable. He tries to ignore the aching in his heart by turning it into the rage that he needs to find Shug and complete his vengeance once and for all. Capone's pain triggers the savage that Capri had managed to put to sleep with her unconditional love. He returns to the beast that he used to be, and wreaks havoc on everything and everyone in his path. Capri can't believe that she fell so hard and so fast that before she knew it, she wound up disrespected, hurt and alone. All she wants to do is focus on her children and put her life back together again. However, both Capone and Capri can not deny that despite the efforts that they put into moving on, the heart wants what the heart wants. But sometimes what the heart wants can get you hurt, killed, or both. With new bae's coming into the picture, more drama, and more mayhem, will Capone and Capri's love concur all?

Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus


Oliver Bullough - 2010
    The Caucasus had to be conquered and, for the highlanders, life would never be the same again. This title features author's journeys who intended to hear the stories of the conquest.