It is 1992, just after the USSR was dissolved and free market economy was declared. Without corresponding legislature, law enforcement and even cultural tradition, the country dived into a chaos of an unrestrained freedom. The former ruling elite - of Communist Party and KGB - joined forces with criminal underground and started to take over. Ordinary people, not used to the self-governing, still hoped that the country leaders would take care about them - the hard working majority. But the ...

Following the success of their Locus Award–winning anthology The New Space Opera, editors Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan up the ante with The New Space Opera 2, in which more of the most beloved names in science fiction spin stunning tales of interstellar adventure and wonder. Authors include:Neal AsherJohn BarnesCory DoctorowJohn KesselJay LakeJohn MeaneyElizabeth MoonGarth NixMike ResnickJustina RobsonKristine Kathryn RuschJohn ScalziBruce SterlingPeter Wat...

In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects of the incident—unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and elevated levels of radiation found on some of their clothes—have led to decades of speculation over what really happened. This gripping work of literary nonf...

“Much like The Boy In the Striped Pajamas or The Book Thief,” this remarkable memoir from Leon Leyson, one of the youngest children to survive the Holocaust on Oskar Schindler’s list, “brings to readers a story of bravery and the fight for a chance to live” (VOYA).This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s list child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezj...

For the centenary of the Russian Revolution, a new edition of the Russian Nobel Prize-winning author's most accessible novelOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an undisputed classic of contemporary literature. First published (in censored form) in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, it is the story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. On every page of this ...

A Dazzling Russian travelogue from the bestselling author of Great PlainsIn his astonishing new work, Ian Frazier, one of our greatest and most entertaining storytellers, trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the storied expanse of Asiatic Russia whose grim renown is but one explanation among hundreds for the region's fascinating, enduring appeal. In Travels in Siberia, Frazier reveals Siberia's role in history—its science, economics, an...

In January 1959, ten experienced young skiers set out for Mount Otorten in the far north of Russia. While one of the skiers fell ill and returned., the remaining nine lost their way and ended up on another mountain slope known as Kholat Syakhl (or ' Mountain of the Dead'). On the night of 1 February 1959 something or someone caused the skiers to flee their tent in such terror that they used knives to slash their way out. Search parties were sent out and their bodi...

Here is a Siberia unheard of in the West. Once the most remote place of exile in all of Russia, Mowat describes it as a burgeoning land of opportunity and growth. Granted extraordinary freedom to visit places rarely seen by any westerner since 1917, Farley Mowat and his wife, Claire, travelled more than 29,000 miles over mountains, steppes, taiga and tundra to meet the people who have chosen to make Siberia their home and livelihood.With his classic exuberance and wit, Mowat brings...

Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline-and near-certain economic collapse-driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment.In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale...

The National Geographic Award–winning explorer and scientist recounts his journey of spiritual healing in the Siberian wilderness.Jon Turk has kayaked around Cape Horn and paddled across the Pacific Ocean to retrace the voyages of ancient people. But, the strangest trip he ever took was the journey he made as a man of science into the realm of the spiritual.In a remote Siberian village, Turk met an elderly Koryak shaman named Moolynaut who invoked the help ...

Based on a riveting historical episode, The Stalin Epigram is a fictional rendering of the life of Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century -- and one of the few artists in Soviet Russia who daringly refused to pay creative homage to Joseph Stalin. The poet's defiance of the Kremlin dictator and the Bolshevik regime -- particularly his outspoken criticism of Stalin's collectivization rampage that drove millions of Russian peasant...

Ryszard Kapuscinski's last book, The Soccer War -a revelation of the contemporary experience of war -- prompted John le Carre to call the author "the conjurer extraordinary of modern reportage." Now, in Imperium, Kapuscinski gives us a work of equal emotional force and evocative power: a personal, brilliantly detailed exploration of the almost unfathomably complex Soviet empire in our time.He begins with his own childhood memories of the postwar Soviet occupation of Pinsk, in what ...