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Red Winter

Red Winter
  • Author(s): Dan Smith
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Thriller
  • Era(s): 1920

It is 1920, central Russia. The Red Terror tightens its hold. Kolya has deserted his Red Army unit and returns home to bury his brother and reunite with his wife and sons. But he finds the village silent and...

Sashenka

Sashenka
  • Author(s): Simon Montefiore
  • Location(s): Russia, St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 20th Century

Winter, 1916. In St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of revolution. Beautiful and headstrong, Sashenka Zeitlin is just sixteen. As her mother parties with Rasputin and her dissolute friends, Sashenka slips into the frozen...

Tatiana and Alexander

Tatiana and Alexander
  • Author(s): Paullina Simons
  • Location(s): New York City (NYC), Russia
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): WW2

The world at war … two people in love. Tatiana is eighteen years old and pregnant when she miraculously escapes war-torn Leningrad to the West, believing herself to be a widow. Her husband, Major Alexander Belov, a decorated hero...

The Betrayal

The Betrayal
  • Author(s): Helen Dunmore
  • Location(s): St Petersburg (Leningrad)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1950s

Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, postsiege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws...

The End of Days

The End of Days
  • Author(s): Jenny Erpenbeck
  • Location(s): Eastern Europe, Europe, Moscow
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 20th Century

‘We are born and we die – but many things could happen in between. Which life do we end up living?’ From one of the most daring voices in European fiction, this is a story of the twentieth century...

The Holy Thief

The Holy Thief
  • Author(s): William Ryan
  • Location(s): Moscow
  • Genre(s): Historical, Thriller
  • Era(s): 1930s

‘Set in 1936, Ryan’s impressive debut introduces Capt. Alexei Korolev of the Moscow Militia’s Criminal Investigation Division, who looks into the murder of a young woman found butchered in a church… Ryan, who merits comparison to Tom Rob Smith,...

The Innocent (David Szalay)

The Innocent (David Szalay)
  • Author(s): David Szalay
  • Location(s): Russia
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

A well researched book about an extraordinary environment and how it affects the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things with huge consequences. About ordinary people going about their daily lives against a thunderous state backdrop.

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 Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita
  • Author(s): Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Location(s): Moscow
  • Genre(s): Fantasy
  • Era(s): Second half 20th century

In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil – to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev – is very much alive. As death and destruction spread...

The Officer’s Daughter

The Officer’s Daughter
  • Author(s): Zina Rohan
  • Location(s): Germany, Poland, Siberia
  • Genre(s): Historical
  • Era(s): 1930s 1940s

This is an epic wartime romance which sees a headstrong young woman face hardship, danger and dilemmas as the forces of history sweep her across continents, while two men compete to claim her heart.It is suitable for fans of...

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