But a few strong people are determined to change their fate. The Bear, a veteran Russian mafia boss, hopes for a peaceful retirement but is dragged back to Moscow when his son is seduced by the wealth and power of the corrupt Russian state. Ambitious MI6 agent Rose Clarke targets the Bear's mysterious daughter-in-law, but this leads her into a horrific and life-threatening trap. Mercenary and rebel John Fairchild unlocks the secrets of his past and wakes a potent and cruel force lying dormant since the Cold War. In untangling a mystery he has unleashed a monster which threatens everyone he cares about. Can they resist Moscow’s power, or will they all be obliterated by its ruthless determination to control everything? Book 2 in the Clarke and Fairchild series of gripping spy thrillers.

    A race to find a secret cache of documents. A deadly family secret revealed.It’s Christmas eve. Max and Kate are convalescing in the snowy woods of Colorado when violence strikes. On the run again, the ragtag family must trade their deepest secrets for safety.Tormented by mysteries from his past, Max learns the truth about his father’s treachery. A vast cache of documents that expose the inner workings of the Russian government are hidden from sight. The CIA, MI6, China’s Ministry of State Security, and other clandestine groups are hunting for the secret archive along with Max’s mortal enemies.In a race against time, Max visits the grandiose ski resort of Chamonix and escapes a fateful train ride through the South of France before trekking across the treacherous borders of southern Russia. Deep in the heart of Siberia, Max must confront his past to decrypt his father’s mysteries before his enemies beat him to the prize.Will Max uncover the Vienna Archive and reverse his family’s fortunes before it’s too late?

    It's the year 2000. Newly elected President Putin is embattled after the Kursk submarine explodes and spirals into the abyss. 118 submariners are trapped. Outwardly, Putin seems not to care, but behind the scenes is another story. Meanwhile, the Russian people yearn for a response from their leader. Mass protests ignite across Russia. Does Putin save the sailors and unite his beloved motherland, or does he lose everything?Discover what motivates the man behind Russia. Is he the cold, ruthless leader you know, or is he...human?

    

    

    A biography of the German princess who became the absolute ruler of the Russian empire and won for herself the reputation of a great enlightened monarch.

    Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws—all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers’ eyes.But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.

    / Now barefoot I tread / on shards.Such is the elegant simplicity—a whole poem in ten words, vibrating with image and emotion—of the best-selling Russian poet Vera Pavlova. The one hundred poems in this book, her first full-length volume in English, all have the same salty immediacy, as if spoken by a woman who feels that, as the title poem concludes, “If there was nothing to regret, / there was nothing to desire.”Pavlova’s economy and directness make her delightfully accessible to us in all of the widely ranging topics she covers here: love, both sexual and the love that reaches beyond sex; motherhood; the memories of childhood that continue to feed us; our lives as passionate souls abroad in the world and the fullness of experience that entails. Expertly translated by her husband, Steven Seymour, Pavlova’s poems are highly disciplined miniatures, exhorting us without hesitation: “Enough painkilling, heal. / Enough cajoling, command.” It is a great pleasure to discover a new Russian poet—one who storms our hearts with pure talent and a seemingly effortless gift for shaping poems.

    - TIMEA mixture of mockery and prophecy, the book savaged every ideology and religion while foreseeing both the Holocaust and Hiroshima. (Ehrenburg himself predicted the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union to the day -- his intimacy with history always bordered on the telepathic.) - Richard Lourie, The NY Times, August 25, 1996The book deals with the adventures of a Mexican dreamer Julio Jurenito and his wanderings about Europe along with his seven disciples (Ehrenburg himself is the first disciple and the author-narrator).The novel includes authentic characters, such as Mayakovski, Picasso, Chaplin, and Tatlin. This is a biting satire of the European postwar civilization. This extraordinarily sneering book is a modernized Candide, covering Soviet Russia and the European West, after the stress of the WWI years.Its main character Jurenito (he is supposed to be a portrait of the famous Mexican painter, Diego Rivera) and his Negro servant travel, observe, comment, and make the reader roar with laughter at the idiotic inconsistencies of capitalist civilization. A prolific and smart journalist by nature, Ehrenburg combines a satirical vein with a snappy, terse language, and a flair for topical themes with very unsentimental eroticism.Julio Jurenito will probably remain the most vivid illustration, not just in Russian but in the whole of European literature, of the post-WWI sentiments of the harassed western intelligentsia. In this book there is everything: sophistication, cynicism, trenchant satire, sentimental lyricism, and the gay abandon of despair. All this combined makes a brilliant firework of paradoxes, subtle observations of the life of the European bourgeoisie, and sarcastic details. It may be called a confession, a pamphlet, a grotesque, or a poem.source: http://www.elkost.com/ilya_ehrenburg/...

    Estranged from her turbulent family for many years, Abbie is heartbroken to hear that they blame her for the tragedy.Determined to uncover her mother’s past, Abbie approaches her beloved grandmother, Millie, in search of answers. As the old woman recounts her own past, Abbie is transported back to the grandeur of the Russian Empire in 1911 with tales of her grandmother’s life as a governess and the revolution that exploded around her.As Abbie struggles to reconcile with her family, and to support herself and her child, she realizes that those long-ago events created aftershocks that threaten to upset the fragile peace she longs to create.

    Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity and the reality of his enormous wealth and thirteen children, Tolstoy dramatically flees his home, only to fall ill at a tiny nearby rail station. The famous (and famously troubled) writer believes he is dying alone, unaware that over a hundred newspapermen camp outside awaiting hourly reports on his condition. Jay Parini moves deftly between a colorful cast of characters to create a stunning portrait of one of the world’s most treasured authors. Dancing between fact and fiction, The Last Station is a brilliant and moving literary performance.

    Packed with details of everyday life from giving birth in a Soviet hospital to living in a Moscow communal apartment. Forced to give up her American citizenship during Stalin's reign, Wettlin was coerced into becoming an informant for the KGB. She describes what Russia was like during and after World War II, her travels from the Baltic states to Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Leningrad, Uzbekistan and Georgia. Her mesmerizing book offers a background for understanding Soviet events that molded the Russian mind--from revolutionary enthusiasm to a complete repudiation of communism.

    Includes new political terminology, new Russian institutions, new countries and republics and new city names. Contains 26,000 entries in the English-Russian section and 40,000 words in the Russian-English section. Irregularities in Russian declensions and conjugations appear at the beginning of each entry.

    Is she the Russian Grand Duchess or the thief of another woman's legacy?Countless others have rendered their verdict. Now it is your turn.Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water or even acknowledge her rescuers, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious young woman claims to be the Russian grand duchess. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre at Ekaterinburg, old enemies and new threats are awakened. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling saga is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

    He was the revolutionary leader who envisioned backward, feudal Russia as the world’s first socialist country.He bent Karl Marx’s theories into a weapon for conquering state power, and built the Bolshevik Party into an efficient political machine capable of leading the workers and seizing power. He held the Russian Revolution together through a bloody civil war, and yet he lived to see the betrayal of his ideals by the rise of Stalin.As much as any leader, his ideas and personality shaped the 20th century.