Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author recounts in feverish tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman -- a pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing, greedy... good for nothing." Overwhelmed afterwards by feelings...

When the Czar proclaims that he will marry his daughter to the man who brings him a flying ship, the Fool of the World sets out to try his luck and meets some unusual companions on the way.

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love...

"When you bring back a long-extinct species, there's more to success than the DNA. Moscow has resurrected the mammoth. But someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again. The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world's foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help. While she was murdered a year ago, her digitized consciousness is uploaded into the brain of a mammoth. Can she help the magnificent creatures...

Hailed for her "fearless indictment of the most powerful man in Russia" (The Wall Street Journal), award-winning journalist Masha Gessen is unparalleled in her understanding of the events and forces that have wracked her native country in recent times. In The Future Is History, she follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren...

Marguerite Laurent, a Parisian needlewoman, is summoned to the Imperial Court of Empress Elizabeth to work as the Empress' personal embroiderer. She travels as part of a retinue of talented foreigners, several of whom worked in the same atelier as Marguerite. Each of the women has her own reasons for wishing to flee France, and they embark upon their adventure in a spirit of excitement mixed with trepidation, for the Empress' reputation is fearsome....

A tour of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Murmansk.

Details tiger conservation unit leader Yuri Trush's hunt through the Siberian terrain for a man-eating tiger, describing what he learned about the animal's history, motives, and method of attack and what happened when he came face-to-face with it.

In September 1941, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad in what was to become one of the longest and most destructive sieges in Western history -- almost three years of bombardment and starvation that culminated in the harsh winter of 1943-1944. More than a million citizens perished. Survivors recall corpses littering the frozen streets, their relatives having neither the means nor the strength to bury them. Residents burned books, furniture,...

When Ivan stumbled on a clearing in the Carpathian forest, his life changed forever. As he viewed the beautiful princess, a malevolent presence stirred, and he fled. Now, years later, compelled to return, he finds the clearing just as he left it, but this time he does not run ...