It's New Year's, 1950... the end of a tumultuous decade. Lamont Cranston, the man that the world and the underworld know all too well as The Shadow, has had enough. It's time for the mysterious nemesis of crime to hang up his cloak, his slouch hat, and his twin .45s, and retire from public life. But despite this momentous decision, Margo Lane and the rest of The Shadow's agents fear that mankind, teetering on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, may not be quite ready to be bereft of the dark avenger. Howard Chaykin, whose 1980s revival of The Shadow at DC Comics reinvigorated the character for comic lovers everywhere, returns to tell a mind-blowing tale of the Master of Men! Who know what evil lurks in the heart of men? Howard Chaykin knows!
Government minister Patrick Macready has been found dead in his flat. The coroner rules it an accident, a sex game gone wrong. Jon Swift is from the old stock of journos - cynical, cantankerous and overweight - and something about his friend's death doesn't seem right. Then days after Macready's flat is apparently burgled, Swift discovers that his friend had been researching a string of Russian government figures who had met similarly 'accidental' fates. When the police refuse to investigate further, Swift gets in touch with his contacts in Moscow, determined to find out if his hunch is correct. Following the lead, he is soon drawn into a violent underworld, where whispers of conspiracies, assassinations and double-agents start blurring the line between friend and foe. But the truth will come at a price, and it may cost him everything.
For years Daniel Moss has been fascinated with Russia. Now, he's finally taking his dream vacation to St. Petersburg and Moscow. Just when he thinks his interesting but uneventful tourist trip has come to a safe end, Daniel's greatest fears about traveling to such a strange and exotic country on the other side of the world start to materialize. Dan and his Russian tour guide, Sasha, find themselves in the middle of a perilous journey as they are taken hostage by Separatist militants of Chechnya, the tiny country still bitterly struggling for independence from Russia. Along the way, Dan and Sasha become acquainted with smugglers and bandits, learn about a side of Russian history they never knew about, and fall in love. They soon discover the truth about the War on Terror and how it relates to the conflict between Chechnya and Russia-and the dark secret about the most dangerous and sought-after terrorist leaders in the world is revealed. Miraculously, Dan and Sasha get one chance to earn their freedom, but if they fail, they will die. If they succeed, they will accomplish one of the greatest missions of all time-and earn the ultimate victory in the War on Terror.
“Natalie Holbrook’s sensibility is stylish and playful, as well as practical, loving, and down-to-earth. Hey Natalie Jean is a terrific read for anyone who wants to make her life more beautiful.” – Gretchen Rubin The blog Hey Natalie Jean has won a cult following with writer Natalie Holbrook’s honest, inspiring, and often witty posts on topics like marriage, babies, nesting, and style. Natalie’s first book, Hey Natalie Jean is one part manifesto and three parts ideas, projects, and advice. Beautifully illustrated and whimsically designed, the book offers twenty-five essays and how-tos that serve as a guide to life: making date-night magic in the middle of the mundane, successfully exploring the city with a three-year-old, and creating a satisfying daily routine that still leaves room for little adventures and lots of magic. Natalie’s optimism, creativity, keen eye, and zeal for life are palpable, and she encourages others to make their lives beautiful with ease. This heartfelt, personal collection of essays and photographs shows Natalie’s ability to identify and describe life’s lovely incidentals in the everyday routine of errands, play dates, and naps. Inspiring, moving, and whip-smart, Hey Natalie Jean is an honest look at the hard work and courage that go into creating a beautiful life.
Faberge jewels, the mysterious Rasputin, and a priceless violin: each plays a part in one young woman's fight for survival, and for love, in revolutionary Russia. St. Petersburg, 1911. Inna Feldman has fled the pogroms of the south to take refuge with distant relatives in Russia's capital. Welcomed by the flamboyant Leman family, she is apprenticed into their violin-making workshop. She feels instantly at home in their bohemian circle, but revolution is in the air, and as society begins to fracture, she is forced to choose between her heart and her head. She loves her brooding cousin, Yasha, but he is wild, destructive, and devoted to revolution. Horace Wallick, an Englishman who makes precious Faberge creations, is older and promises security and respectability. And, like many others, she is drawn to the mysterious, charismatic figure beginning to make a name for himself in the city: Rasputin. As the rebellion descends into anarchy and bloodshed, a commission to repair a priceless Stadivarius violin offers Inna a means of escape. But what man will she choose to take with her? And is it already too late? A magical and passionate story steeped in history and intrigue, Vanora Bennett's Midnight in St. Petersburg is an extraordinary novel of music, politics, and the toll that revolution exacts on the human heart.
A personal journey through some of the darkest moments of the cold war and the early days of television news Marvin Kalb, the award-winning journalist who has written extensively about the world he reported on during his long career, now turns his eye on the young man who became that journalist. Chosen by legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to become one of what came to be known as the Murrow Boys, Kalb in this newest volume of his memoirs takes readers back to his first days as a journalist, and what also were the first days of broadcast news. Kalb captures the excitement of being present at the creation of a whole new way of bringing news immediately to the public. And what news. Cold War tensions were high between Eisenhower's America and Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Kalb is at the center, occupying a unique spot as a student of Russia tasked with explaining Moscow to Washington and the American public. He joins a cast of legendary figures along the way, from Murrow himself to Eric Severeid, Howard K. Smith, Richard Hottelet, Charles Kuralt, and Daniel Schorr among many others. He finds himself assigned as Moscow correspondent of CBS News just as the U2 incident—the downing of a US spy plane over Russian territory—is unfolding. As readers of his first volume, The Year I Was Peter the Great, will recall, being the right person, in the right place, at the right time found Kalb face to face with Khrushchev. Assignment Russia sees Kalb once again an eyewitness to history—and a writer and analyst who has helped shape the first draft of that history.
Satan comes to Soviet Moscow in this critically acclaimed translation of one of the most important and best-loved modern classics in world literature. The Master and Margarita has been captivating readers around the world ever since its first publication in 1967. Written during Stalin’s time in power but suppressed in the Soviet Union for decades, Bulgakov’s masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. In The Master and Margarita, the Devil himself pays a visit to Soviet Moscow. Accompanied by a retinue that includes the fast-talking, vodka-drinking, giant tomcat Behemoth, he sets about creating a whirlwind of chaos that soon involves the beautiful Margarita and her beloved, a distraught writer known only as the Master, and even Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy to create a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered the greatest novel to come out of the Soviet Union. It appears in this edition in a translation by Mirra Ginsburg that was judged “brilliant” by Publishers Weekly. Praise for The Master and Margarita “A wild surrealistic romp. . . . Brilliantly flamboyant and outrageous.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The Detroit News “Fine, funny, imaginative. . . . The Master and Margarita stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative.” —Saul Maloff, Newsweek “A rich, funny, moving and bitter novel. . . . Vast and boisterous entertainment.” —The New York Times “The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant. . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune “Funny, devilish, brilliant satire. . . . It’s literature of the highest order and . . . it will deliver a full measure of enjoyment and enlightenment.” —Publishers Weekly
The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers Soon to be a Showtime/Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov From the number one New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel 'A wonderful book' - Tana French 'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year '[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD
Corporate America is no longer content doing what it does best, which is making money. These business behemoths are aggressively attempting to control the entire economic, cultural and political realms of American life. They have nearly succeeded. Most Americans would agree that corporate power should be prohibited from disrupting the natural rhythm of our democratic institutions. Yet we the people are thwarted from addressing the subject of corporate power, not because we do not wish to have the conversation, but because we have nobody to address the issue. Our political representatives, hostages as they are to corporate campaign donations and government lobbyists, cannot seriously debate the question of corporate power. Indeed, their very careers depend on corporate power. Meanwhile, the media, the so-called Fourth Estate, refuses to discuss the issue of excessive corporate power because the media itself is a corporation. At the same time, the consequences of excessive corporate power are becoming acutely obvious inside of the corporate universe. Today, fewer U.S. workers are spending more time on the job to produce a greater amount of products, while not receiving fair recompense. Meanwhile, wages for American workers, adjusted for inflation, have remained stagnant for the past 30 years, while U.S. vacation time in the United States is the lowest of all the industrial economies. The blatant lack of representation in the workplace is directly responsible for these shameful statistics. Just 7 percent of the American workforce today enjoys union representation, a percentage that pales in comparison with past generations. There is also the question of corporations disrupting the fabric of cultural life. Indeed, today Main Street U.S.A. is largely unrecognizable. This can be witnessed in everything from the preponderance of fast food restaurants and hyper-stores, to Corporate America's aggressive monopoly on all forms of entertainment, which is on a downward spiral to total degeneracy. Since corporate-owned cultural venues (e.g., television, film, books) have more influence over our children than do educational institutions, it should come as no surprise that violence and unsocial behavior is on the rise. History has already proven that no nation can survive for long once its moral fabric has been shredded. Finally, the symptoms of extreme levels of corporate power in our lives are becoming increasingly conspicuous in a variety of ways. From the rise of destructive behavior at home, to the sadistic treatment prisoners of war in foreign lands (read: Guantanamo Bay), to the reckless disregard for the collapse of the natural environment, something has gone awry in the heart of America (I call it 'corporate zombyism'). The nature of the problem suggests that the American psyche is being guided and influenced by less than respectable influences. Since it is Corporate America that is largely responsible for the degraded mental and physical content that we are now feeding the people, this institution must accept a large part of the blame for America's fall from grace. The time has come to tame this beast of burden; the time has come to remove corporate power from the halls of power. It is time for the American people - like their proud and independent ancestors who founded this country many years ago - to regain control of their country once again.
The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the U.S. election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. "Russian Roulette is...the most thorough and riveting account." -- The New York Times Russian Roulette is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no "third-rate burglary." It was far more sophisticated and sinister -- a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle -- including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn -- and Russia. Russian Roulette chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington?
