*A Story of a Life: Books 1–3* introduces the reader to the most crucial stages of the author’s biography—childhood, youth, and early adulthood—set against the backdrop of the country’s rapidly changing history. – In *Distant Years*, Paustovsky portrays the world of his childhood: family, nature, early travels, and the impressions that shaped the future writer’s character. *Restless Youth*...

– *The Story of a Life* is not a dry memoir but a major literary work in which a real-life biography transforms into a genuine novel. – Through the author’s recollections, the reader journeys from his pre-revolutionary childhood and school years to his early literary successes. The protagonist describes wars, relocations between cities, newspaper work, and encounters with the people who shaped...

Gifted with an amazing instinct and a phenomenal memory, Agatha Mystery dreams of becoming a mystery writer. That’s for the future, though; for now, she is simply a brilliant sleuth! Together with her hapless cousin Larry—a student at detective school—she travels the globe solving the most baffling mysteries. Assisting them are a loyal butler, a cantankerous Siberian cat, and a host of...

Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos—an unforgettably compelling masterpiece—tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans....

When Vladimir Voinovich first began writing in his youth, he dreamed of gaining renown within a small circle of readers and finding his place within the system. He soon became famous among millions. The system accepted him. Yet, his nature, character, temperament, keen insight, Attic wit—and the very makeup of his personality—were such that he clashed with that system and, in a turn few had...

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he...

As a Red, Darrow grew up working the mines deep beneath the surface of Mars, enduring backbreaking labor while dreaming of the better future he was building for his descendants. But the Society he faithfully served was built on lies. Darrow’s kind have been betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds—and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so Darrow sacrifices himself...