Russia Girl

The Little Drummer Girl (Abridged): Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into 'the theatre of the real' by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and delicate trap set to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist. A Perfect Spy (Abridged): Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father and a secret agent. Pym’s life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets.

On one of those magically white winter nights, my mother took me in her arms and shut the doors behind her. We left my drunken father in the name of a better life. And the name of that better life was Tom, a local gangster with the face of the devil himself. I remember looking at my mother's bloody face bashed into the ground, teeth scattered around her limp body. I understood then that one of us was going to die. Fortunately, I was right!

Luliia was a dedicated member of the Komsomol (the Soviet communist youth organization) and her parents worked for the NKVD. She started at the sniper school and eventually became a valued member of her battalion during operations against Prussia. She persevered through eight months of training before leaving for the Front on 24th November 1944 just days after qualifying. Joining the third Belorussian Front her battalion endured rounds of German mortar as well as loudspeaker announcements beckoning them to come over to the German side.

It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime to see the splendors of Russia. But when Austria declares war on Serbia, Eliza escapes back to America, while Sofya and her family flee to their country estate. In need of domestic help, they hire the local fortune-teller’s daughter, Varinka, unknowingly bringing intense danger into their household.

The prize-winning memoir of one of the world's great writers, about coming of age and finding her voice amid the hardships of Stalinist Russia. Born across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotel - the setting of the New York Times best-selling novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up in a family of Bolshevik intellectuals who were reduced in the wake of the Russian Revolution to waiting in bread lines.

Playing out as a scintillating story with unexpected twists, “The Girl on the Trail” explores the severe and overwhelming shock of discovering uncomfortable truths about those we look up to, the security of family, the joy and satisfaction of love, the devastation of betrayal and loss, and the comfort of loyalty in our lives. The teenage Tatiana is certain she has her future mapped out: She would find love when she becomes a young woman, she would live a loving life all through college, and she would marry the knight who would secure her heart. But then, her compromised mother shakes ...

“You say you want this,” Ivan breathed. I looked up at him, heat filling my body. “You show me, say my name.” He’d seen the video—the video I forgot all about! “Ivan, I—” “Nyet,” he hissed. “No excuses. You belong to Alexei. I cannot have you, Julie.” “Ivan, please—” “You cannot do this thing you say today,” Ivan said, and there was a thread of pleading under the rasp in his voice. “You cannot give this to anyone but Alexei.” “I already have,” I said, defiantly staring up at him. “I gave it to you. You just haven’t claimed it yet...” Julie's...

Just three weeks after my 21st birthday, on the evening of October 4, 1994, I was abducted from the streets of my hometown in Southern Russia while on my way home. They drugged me and drove to another country, where they held me captive in a tiny room at first, and then under a house in a pit. A few weeks after my kidnapping, a brutal civil war broke out. Through eight horrifying months of captivity, witnessing atrocities, surviving bombings and sexual violence, I fought desperately to stay alive, stay sane, and not to lose the one thing that kept me going: my hope.