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    He might have succeeded Lenin and become the ruler of the Soviet Union. But by the time the Second World War broke out he was in exile, living in Mexico in a villa borrowed from the great artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, guarded only by several na�ve young Americans in awe of the great theoretician. The household was awash with emotional turmoil - tensions grew between Trotsky and Rivera, as questions arose over his relations with Frida Kahlo. His wife was restless and jealous. Outside of the villa, Mexican communists tried to storm the house and kill the man they regarded as a traitor, the Trotskys' sons were being persecuted and killed in Europe, and in Moscow, Stalin personally ordered his secret police to kill his fiercest left-wing critic - at any cost. By the summer of 1940, they had found a man who could penetrate the tight security around the house in far-away Mexico . . .A brilliant reconstruction of one of the most infamous state crimes, and a panoramic view of Trotsky's incredible life. Here is all the squalor, glory, fanaticism and bloodshed of a deadly rivalry.

    Professor Weil introduces you to masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Chekhov's The Seagull, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and many other great novels, stories, plays, and poems. In all, you plunge into more than 40 works by a dozen writers, from Aleksandr Pushkin in the 19th century to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 20th century. You also investigate the origin of Russian literature itself, which traces its lineage back to powerful epic poetry and beautiful renderings of the Bible into Slavic during the Middle Ages. All of these works are treated in translation, but Professor Weil does something very unusual in the literature-in-translation arena. For almost every passage that he quotes in English, he reads an extract in the original Russian, with a fluent accent and an actor's sense of drama.

    Written during this time, this is the account of prison life and the people he encountered.There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the down-and-out, the grass... He describes a hidden world of brutality and corruption, yet one where moments of humanity still manage to shine through.One in ten Russian men pass through prison at some point in their lives. This book is a denunciation of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality, and a passionate call to recognise a human tragedy.

    The sudden and dramatic change left many people adrift and uncertain—but also full of a tentative but tenacious hope. Returning again and again to the provincial hinterlands of this rapidly evolving country from 1992 to 2008, Susan Richards struck up some extraordinary friendships with people in the middle of this historical drama. Anna, a questing journalist, struggles to express her passionate spirituality within the rules of the new society. Natasha, a restless spirit, has relocated from Siberia in a bid to escape the demands of her upper-class family and her own mysterious demons. Tatiana and Misha, whose business empire has blossomed from the ashes of the Soviet Union, seem, despite their luxury, uneasy in this new world. Richards watches them grow and change, their fortunes rise and fall, their hopes soar and crash.   Through their stories and her own experiences, Susan Richards demonstrates how in Russia, the past and the present cannot be separated. She meets scientists convinced of the existence of UFOs and mind-control warfare. She visits a cult based on working the land and a tiny civilization founded on the practices of traditional Russian Orthodoxy. Gangsters, dreamers, artists, healers, all are wondering in their own ways, “Who are we now if we’re not communist? What does it mean to be Russian?” This remarkable history of contemporary Russia holds a mirror up to a forgotten people. Lost and Found in Russia is a magical and unforgettable portrait of a society in transition.

    

    Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent.The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.

    

    He likes to sit in the window, watch the birds, and eat three square meals a day. But what's a regular house cat to do if he falls in love with a beautiful street cat who has some very strange - and really rather dangerous - demands? Baguette must travel back through the Ocean of Time to the lost island of Catlantis. He must find a way to save the nine lives of all cats before it is too late. And he must outwit the wicked black cat Noir, who is hot on his tail. Only then can he hope to win the paw of Purriana...

    Religion and philosophy, not economics or politics, determine history and society. Berdyaev takes up the story in the nineteenth century. He traces the lineage of such powerful artists and thinkers as Chaadev, Khomyakov, Kireevksy, Leontyev, Aksakov, Hertzen, Bakunin, all of whom struggled to integrate the polarities of East and West, spirit and matter, and male and female in the Russian soul. This soul, however, is so immense, boundless, and vague that it is incapable of settling for "the halfway kingdom of culture." Demanding all or nothing, alternatively apocalyptic and nihilistic, Russians strove to justify culture and discover Russia's mystical mission. Impatient with the slow processes of history, distrusting all authority and yet haunted by a vision of unity, thinkers such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Federov, and Solovyov created an original and vital religious philosophy that culminated in the Russian Renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century. The fruit of these great figures, of whom Berdyaev was one (others included Florensky, Bulgakov, Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Blok, and Bely), was cut short by the 1917 Revolution. In recent years, however, their works have been available in self-published (Samizdat) editions. Underground, a great philosophical and spiritual rebirth was occuring. Now they are available again, and the next installment of the Russian idea is being prepared. This book is therefore essential reading for an understanding of the new Russia.

    Born to a Siberian woman and an African athlete who came to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Mbobo must navigate the complexities of being a fatherless, mixed-raced boy in the shaky terrain of the Soviet Union before its collapse.

    Michael, married to a double divorcee, Natasha, the daughter of a Moscow lawyer, was the first Romanov murdered by the Bolsheviks, five weeks before the other mass killings, and because he was the Romanov who posed the greatest threat to them. However, they never admitted responsibility for his murder, pretending instead that he had escaped. This book, based chiefly on original contemporary sources in Russia, tells you what the Soviet Union intended that you should never know. Does that matter now? Very much so, for unlike his brother Nicholas, Michael can serve as the bridge between today's Russia and Tsarist Russia, a gap which has yet to be closed. As Viktor Yevtukhov, appointed deputy Russian Minister of Justice in February 2011, has said: 'We should know more about this man and remember him, because this memory can give our society the ethical foundation we need'. This book will tell you why, after almost a century, that should be so. From the tragedy of the past, a hope for the future...

    Osip Mandelstam visited Armenia in 1930, and during the eight months of his stay, he rediscovered his poetic voice and was inspired to write an experimental meditation on the country and its ancient culture.

    Finn, it seems, loves Lauren.A warm-hearted and witty novella about friendship, family and falling in love.When Alice Day meets a handsome stranger in a hotel bar, she falls in love at first sight and throws caution to the wind.One week later, Alice sees him again … but he’s using a different name and insisting he’s never met her before. To make matters worse, he’s dating Lauren, the step-sister of Alice’s best friend.Finn Barclay says he is an only child so there must be some mistake. Could he have a double? Or is there another explanation? And will Alice get her heart’s desire?

    His mother, Kate, a labor-and-delivery nurse, struggles to maintain the family, which also includes Scarlett, 14, and Maddy, 4. The therapist says they are not coping well. In fact, the Dugan family is a mess—until a strange boy named Norbert moves in next door and changes their lives in more ways than they could ever imagine.About the authorsMark Gimenez is the author of six novels: THE COLOR OF LAW, THE ABDUCTION, THE PERK, THE COMMON LAWYER, ACCUSED, and THE GOVERNOR'S WIFE. Cole Gimenez is a seventh-grader. They live in Texas.