In an era of financial free-for-all in Russia, a Moscow cop deals with rampant crime in a “terrific” and “exceptional” police drama (Detroit Free Press). It’s the mid-nineties, and capitalism and privatization have come to Russia. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia is on the rise. Newfound democracy has not reduced the crime rate, and Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a forty-year veteran of the Moscow police department, and his colleagues have their hands full. A prominent businessman is kidnapped in broad daylight. Three children—as innocent looking as they are savage—terrorize a slum. And a house full of Czarist treasures is raided by tax police—only to have every piece vanish the following day. As criminals at all levels rush to exploit a system in confusion, “Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is a rarity among policemen: shrewd, utterly incorruptible and destined to survive each complex political shift” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
A Jewish factory worker is falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Russia in 1911, and his trial becomes an international cause célèbre. On March 20, 1911, thirteen-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found stabbed to death in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. Four months later, Russian police arrested Mendel Beilis, a thirty-seven-year-old father of five who worked as a clerk in a brick factory nearby, and charged him not only with Andrei’s murder but also with the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child. Despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, that he had a solid alibi, and that his main accuser was a professional criminal who was herself under suspicion for the murder, Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years before being brought to trial. As a handful of Russian officials and journalists diligently searched for the real killer, the rabid anti-Semites known as the Black Hundreds whipped into a frenzy men and women throughout the Russian Empire who firmly believed that this was only the latest example of centuries of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children—the age-old blood libel. With the full backing of Tsar Nicholas II’s teetering government, the prosecution called an array of “expert witnesses”—pathologists, a theologian, a psychological profiler—whose laughably incompetent testimony horrified liberal Russians and brought to Beilis’s side an array of international supporters who included Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Anatole France, Arthur Conan Doyle, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Jane Addams. The jury’s split verdict allowed both sides to claim victory: they agreed with the prosecution’s description of the wounds on the boy’s body—a description that was worded to imply a ritual murder—but they determined that Beilis was not the murderer. After the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, a renewed effort to find Andrei’s killer was not successful; in recent years his grave has become a pilgrimage site for those convinced that the boy was murdered by a Jew so that his blood could be used in making Passover matzo. Visitors today will find it covered with flowers. (With 24 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad: “A compelling rendering of Putin’s frightening extensions of power into Europe and the United States” (Associated Press). They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One by one, their British lawyers and fixers met similarly grisly ends. Yet, one by one, the British authorities shut down every investigation — and carried on courting the Kremlin. The spies in the riverside headquarters of MI6 looked on with horror as the scope of the Kremlin's global killing campaign became all too clear. And, across the Atlantic, American intelligence officials watched with mounting alarm as the bodies piled up, concerned that the tide of death could spread to the United States. Those fears intensified when a one-time Kremlin henchman was found bludgeoned to death in a Washington, D.C. penthouse. But it wasn't until Putin's assassins unleashed a deadly chemical weapon on the streets of Britain, endangering hundreds of members of the public in a failed attempt to slay the double agent Sergei Skripal, that Western governments were finally forced to admit that the killing had spun out of control. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance — and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London's high-end night clubs to Miami's million-dollar hideouts ultimately renders a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal, and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller. Based on a vast trove of unpublished documents, bags of discarded police evidence, and interviews with hundreds of insiders, this heart-stopping international investigation uncovers one of the most important — and terrifying — geopolitical stories of our time.
This historical novel is a matriarch's remembrance of two oil industry families over three generations: In Pennsylvania, as the Civil War ends, oil industry pioneers fight to control the commodity, own the infrastructure and win the wealth; in the 1890s New York City of the Standard Oil barons, the second generation fights corruption and suffers romantic tragedy as the trade goes global; and, caught in the terrible horrors of World War I, the third generation learns what mature love--and oil--really mean to the emerging modern world. In lean, muscular prose and through relentless storytelling, the book (the first in a multivolume saga of oil's history) is a tour of the world's first oil producing regions, from Pennsylvania to Baku to Mesopotamia to Indonesia to Persia to Romania. It weaves hard fact with adventure, romance and melodrama to explore the metaphysical and stark cold truths about love, family, oil and our addiction to it.
“Special Forces is harsh. It could be a lot harsher.” Treason takes many forms. Once trust is broken, it is hard to reforge. Thorrn discovers this all too clearly, much to his detriment. But someone wants Thorrn dead, and they don’t care how many lives they ruin in the process. Meanwhile, there is a spate of murders targeting Oberrotian officials, and Thorrn’s contingent is sent to investigate. Back to being the lowest of the low, Thorrn struggles to trust again – especially when he finds two of the most powerful mages in the world working together, and one of them is the woman he loves. "A damn fine read... Becky James has now officially become one of my auto-buy authors." - The Magic Book Corner "What are you doing if you aren't reading this goddamn masterpiece." - My Fair Fiction "It's a world I want to be immersed in a lot longer, and I can't wait to see what else Becky James can come up with!" - Brey's Reviews
In his lively and witty quasi-autobiography, Essad Bey tells us the story of his childhood in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and of his flight from the Russian Revolution in 1917, which brought him through half the Orient, through the Caucasus, then to Istanbul - where this book concludes - and finally to Berlin.
This literary biography brings the life and work of H. N. Bialik, widely known as the National Hebrew Poet, to the English reader for the first time. With appreciation for his brilliance and depth, Sara Feinstein expounds how Bialik drew upon sources in Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, and the Hebrew poets of the Golden Age of Spain in creating an archetypal mode of writing in Modern Hebrew Literature. In this work, segments of Bialik's best-known oeuvre are rendered in English translations that illustrate his power of expression and mastery of language. Feinstein's research and interpretation also show how Bialik intertwined personal and collective elements of imagery and emotion that endeared him to his readers. Extensive endnotes, bibliography, glossary, suggestions for further reading, and an index of works by Bialik make this literary biography of the National Hebrew Poet a valuable resource in Modern Hebrew Literature.This literary biography brings the life and work of H. N. Bialik, widely known as the National Hebrew Poet, to the English reader for the first time. With appreciation for his brilliance and depth, Sara Feinstein expounds how Bialik drew upon sources in Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, and the Hebrew poets of the Golden Age of Spain in creating an archetypal mode of writing in Modern Hebrew Literature.
The opening of the world's first railroad in Britain and America in 1830 marked the dawn of a new age. Within the course of a decade, tracks were being laid as far afield as Australia and Cuba, and by the outbreak of World War I, the United States alone boasted over a quarter of a million miles. With unrelenting determination, architectural innovation, and under gruesome labor conditions, a global railroad network was built that forever changed the way people lived. From Panama to Punjab, from Tasmania to Turin, Christian Wolmar shows how cultures were enriched, and destroyed, by one of the greatest global transport revolutions of our time, and celebrates the visionaries and laborers responsible for its creation.
Until the end of the Cold War, the politics of national identity was confined to isolated incidents of ethnics strife and civil war in distant countries. Now, with the collapse of Communist regimes across Europe and the loosening of the Cold War's clamp on East-West relations, a surge of nationalism has swept the world stage. In Blood and Belonging, Ignatieff makes a thorough examination of why blood ties--in places as diverse as Yugoslavia, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, Quebec, Germany, and the former Soviet republics--may be the definitive factor in international relation today. He asks how ethnic pride turned into ethnic cleansing, whether modern citizens can lay the ghosts of a warring past, why--and whether--a people need a state of their own, and why armed struggle might be justified. Blood and Belonging is a profound and searching look at one of the most complex issues of our time.
A Jewish factory worker is falsely accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy in Russia in 1911, and his trial becomes an international cause célèbre. On March 20, 1911, thirteen-year-old Andrei Yushchinsky was found stabbed to death in a cave on the outskirts of Kiev. Four months later, Russian police arrested Mendel Beilis, a thirty-seven-year-old father of five who worked as a clerk in a brick factory nearby, and charged him not only with Andrei’s murder but also with the Jewish ritual murder of a Christian child. Despite the fact that there was no evidence linking him to the crime, that he had a solid alibi, and that his main accuser was a professional criminal who was herself under suspicion for the murder, Beilis was imprisoned for more than two years before being brought to trial. As a handful of Russian officials and journalists diligently searched for the real killer, the rabid anti-Semites known as the Black Hundreds whipped into a frenzy men and women throughout the Russian Empire who firmly believed that this was only the latest example of centuries of Jewish ritual murder of Christian children—the age-old blood libel. With the full backing of Tsar Nicholas II’s teetering government, the prosecution called an array of “expert witnesses”—pathologists, a theologian, a psychological profiler—whose laughably incompetent testimony horrified liberal Russians and brought to Beilis’s side an array of international supporters who included Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Anatole France, Arthur Conan Doyle, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Jane Addams. The jury’s split verdict allowed both sides to claim victory: they agreed with the prosecution’s description of the wounds on the boy’s body—a description that was worded to imply a ritual murder—but they determined that Beilis was not the murderer. After the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, a renewed effort to find Andrei’s killer was not successful; in recent years his grave has become a pilgrimage site for those convinced that the boy was murdered by a Jew so that his blood could be used in making Passover matzo. Visitors today will find it covered with flowers. (With 24 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
