Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Newsletter Updates

Join Now

Filter:

The Blackbird Girls

The Blackbird Girls
  • Author(s): Anne Blankman
  • Location(s): Ukraine, St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Children
  • Era(s): 1986 and 1941

Like Ruta Sepetys for middle grade, Anne Blankman pens a poignant and timeless story of friendship that twines together moments in underexplored history. On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red...

The Life of an Unknown Man

The Life of an Unknown Man
  • Author(s): Andrei Makine, Geoffrey Strachan (Translator)
  • Location(s): Paris, St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Contemporary, World War 2

A deeply moving meditation on memory, history, love, and art by the author of “Dreams of My Russian Summers”. In “The Life of an Unknown Man”, Andreï Makine explores what truly matters in life through the prism of Russia’s...

The Raven’s Children

The Raven’s Children
  • Author(s): Yulia Yakovleva
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Children
  • Era(s): 1938

Russia in 1938 is a place of great terror. Joseph Stalin is in charge. His Secret Police are everywhere, searching for anyone who might be his enemy. People have no idea who they can trust. Seven-year-old Shura doesn’t know...

Spies in St. Petersburg

Spies in St. Petersburg
  • Author(s): Katherine Woodfine
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Children
  • Era(s): early 21st

With Sophie still missing in action after their explosive mission in Paris, Lil decides to take matters into her own hands. On a new mission for the Secret Service Bureau, can Lil find Sophie in misty, mysterious St Petersburg?...

The Tzar’s Curious Runaways

The Tzar’s Curious Runaways
  • Author(s): Robin Scott-Elliot
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Children
  • Era(s): 1725

A magical, captivating tale of adventure set in imperial Russia. St Petersburg, Russia 1725. Katinka Dashkova is running for her life because everything she knows is changing. Katinka, a dazzling ballerina with a hunched back, and her friends Alexei...

The Book of Anna

The Book of Anna
  • Author(s): Carmen Boullosa
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Early 20th Century

Saint Petersburg, 1905. Behind the gates of the Karenin Palace, Sergei, son of Anna Karenina, meets Tolstoy in his dreams and finds reminders of his mother everywhere: the vivid portrait that the tsar intends to acquire and the opium-infused...

Aetherial Worlds

Aetherial Worlds
  • Author(s): Tatyana Tolstaya
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Short Stories
  • Era(s): ariousV

Ordinary realities and yearnings to transcend them lead to miraculous other worlds in this dazzling collection of stories. A woman’s deceased father appears in her dreams with clues about the afterlife; a Russian professor in a small American town...

St Petersburg: Three Centuries of Murderous Desire

St Petersburg: Three Centuries of Murderous Desire
  • Author(s): Jonathan Miles
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Historical, Nonfiction
  • Era(s): 1700s onwards

St Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, risen from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703...

The Overcoat and Other Short Stories

The Overcoat and Other Short Stories
  • Author(s): Nikolai Gogol
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Short Stories
  • Era(s): Various

Four works by great 19th-century Russian author: “The Nose,” a savage satire of Russia’s incompetent bureaucrats; “Old-Fashioned Farmers,” a pleasant depiction of an elderly couple living in rustic seclusion; “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich,”...

The Girl from the Hermitage

The Girl from the Hermitage
  • Author(s): Molly Gartland
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1940s/1980s

It is December 1941, and eight-year-old Galina and her friend Vera are caught in the siege of Leningrad, eating soup made of wallpaper, with the occasional luxury of a dead rat. Galina’s artist father Mikhail has been kept away...

Would you like to add a book or a review or create a reading list? Join Today – It's FREE

Register Now