This collection includes two of Dostoevsky's early works - 'Poor People' and 'The Double', which marked the birth of the future great novelist. 'Poor People' is the writer's debut novel.' The touching love story of the petty official Makar Devushkin and Varenka Dobroselova reveals the eternal theme of the 'little man'. Despite the inner beauty and nobility of the soul, they are not able to...

'In the trenches of Stalingrad' (first published in 1946) was not easy for the reader and appeared in print only thanks to the perseverance of Alexander Tvardovsky, but it was from her that the glory of one of the best trends in Russian literature about the Great Patriotic War - 'lieutenant prose' began. Simple and humane, largely autobiographical, full of precise details and expressive...

'There was a hole in the ground, and a hobbit lived in the hole.' These words were written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien on the back of a school exam paper he was checking one hot summer day. And who would have thought that it was from them, like from a magic seed, that one of the most famous works of world literature would grow. This is a fairy tale that captivated both children and adults,...

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel’s vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author’s lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its...

'Stories about the Motherland' is a bold, almost impudent book. Perhaps the first attempt to give a new - honest, accurate - description of our country in a long time. Real and false patriotism, living Russia and TV-screen Russia, power and people... Dmitry Glukhovsky takes up the most important, most sensitive topics of our life today and speaks about them in the tone in which political jokes...

The young companion of a capricious elderly American woman becomes the wife of the imposing English aristocrat Maximilian de Winter, tormented by secret sadness, and arrives with him at his Manderley family estate. In a huge gloomy mansion, the people, the walls, and, it seems, the air itself remind the new owner of her deceased predecessor, the beautiful and sophisticated Rebecca de Winter....

Set against the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family, tracing their rise and fall over three generations. Theirs is a sweeping history of heroism and duty, desire and compromise, tragedy and heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve of World War One, when all is set to fall apart. Rich, epic and...

Ijon Tichy is the only human who knows for sure whether the self-programming robots on the moon are plotting a terrestrial invasion. But a highly focused ray severs his corpus collosum. Now his left brain can’t remember the secret and his uncooperative right brain won’t tell. Tichy struggles for control of the lost memory and of his own two warring sides.

Hal Bregg is an astronaut who returns from a space mission in which only 10 biological years have passed for him, while 127 years have elapsed on Earth. He finds that the Earth has changed beyond recognition, filled with human beings who have been medically neutralized. How does an astronaut join a civilization that shuns risk?

Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving north to meet some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of hitchhikers who persuade him to take a job at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional institute involve all sorts of magical beings - a wish-granting fish, a tree mermaid, a...

Maxim Kammerer is a young amateur space explorer from Earth, regarded as a failure by his friends and relatives because this occupation is not considered to be a serious pursuit. The novel starts when he accidentally discovers an unexplored planet Saraksh inhabited by a humanoid race. The atmospheric conditions on Saraksh are such that the inhabitants believe that they live inside a sphere. The...

When two Niveus Private Academy students, Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo, are selected to be part of the elite school's senior class prefects, it looks like their year is off to an amazing start. After all, not only does it look great on college applications, but it officially puts each of them in the running for valedictorian, too. Shortly after the announcement is made, though, someone...