In a near future, the air pollution is so bad that everyone wears gas masks. The infant mortality rate is soaring, and birth defects, new diseases, and physical ailments of all kinds abound. The water is undrinkable—unless you’re poor and have no choice. Large corporations fighting over profits from gas masks, drinking water, and clean food tower over an ineffectual, corrupt government.

James Edwin Gunn (1923-2020) was an American science fiction writer, critic, teacher, professor at the University of Kansas, and founder of the Sturgeon and Campbell Memorial Awards. He was a two-time Hugo Award winner, a Nebula Grand Master, and the author of nearly two dozen novels and more than one hundred short stories and novellas. This collection includes novellas and short stories...

— Alexander Belyaev is called the Soviet Jules Verne and Herbert Wells – he skillfully intertwined captivating plots with the latest scientific achievements, and many of the ideas or assumptions he expressed have eventually become reality. — Belyaev is primarily known for his novels ‘The Island of Lost Ships,’ ‘Professor Dowell's Head,’ ‘The Air Seller,’ and, of course, ‘The Amphibian Man.’...

This collection includes two novels by Conan Doyle about the adventures of the immortal duo from 221B Baker Street – the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and assistant, Dr. Watson. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. For two centuries now, new generations of readers have followed with unwavering enthusiasm and fascination...

Three immortal masterpieces of world drama, translated into all major languages, belonging to the golden fund of literature of all times and peoples, and still performed on the best stages of the world today and adapted for the screen a total of 43 times (including in our country). The dramatic poem ‘Peer Gynt,’ with its whimsical combination of reality and mysticism, social satire, and...

More than a hundred years have passed since the first Sherlock Holmes story was published, and readers all over the world still eagerly immerse themselves in the world of fascinating and dangerous adventures, the special charm of which lies in the firm conviction that everything will end well, because there are several dozen stories!

‘The Three Musketeers’ is the most famous historical adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, telling the story of the dangerous and exciting adventures of the brave Gascon d'Artagnan, the noble Athos, the cheerful Porthos, and the mysterious Aramis.

Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan is an ambitious and highly original work of political philosophy. Claiming that man's essential nature is competitive and selfish, Hobbes formulates the case for a powerful sovereign—or Leviathan—to enforce peace and the law, substituting security for the anarchic freedom he believed human beings would otherwise experience. This...

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive...

In this amazing philosophical book, which ridicules the modern insane world, the absurdity and cruelty of human actions, fantasy and reality, madness and logic, author and character, truth and falsehood, fact and fiction merge into one.

Every newcomer has their own Moscow. For the heroine of this book, the city is exactly as she wanted to see it: noisy, chaotic, but surprisingly not malicious – thanks to the wonderful people who are ready to offer help precisely when it seemed there was no one to turn to.

This collection includes immortal masterpieces of ancient comedy – such as ‘The Birds’ and ‘The Clouds,’ ‘Lysistrata’ and ‘The Frogs,’ ‘The Two Menaechmi,’ ‘The Grouch,’ and ‘The Girl from Andros.’ And although the plots of these magnificent comedies transport us to the distant past, the characters and human types described in them are just as familiar to us today as they were to the...