Just released from a mental hospital, Galina, a young translator and recovering schizophrenic, doesn't quite believe her eyes when her pregnant sister abruptly gives birth and changes into a fleeing jackdaw. Yet others across the city witness similar transformations, including Yakov, a neighborhood detective assigned to investigate a disturbing epidemic of missing-person cases. When street artist Fyodor stumbles on a surprising clue to the avian mystery, Galina and Yakov follow him through a magic portal visible only in window reflections and into an underground world of forgotten misfits and ... continue
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as “the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth. With the same suppleness, energy, and range of voices that won their translation of The Brothers Karamazov the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky offer a brilliant translation of Dostoevsky's astounding pyschological thriller, newly revised for his bicentenniel. When Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, commit... continue
"A thriller dipped in poison ... shares some of le Carré’s fascination with secret worlds and the nature of evil." —The New York Times The terrifying, lengthening list of Russia’s use of lethal poisons against its critics has inspired acclaimed author Sergei Lebedev’s latest novel. With uncanny timing, he examines how and why Russia and the Soviet Union have developed horrendous neurotoxins. At its center is a ruthless chemist named Professor Kalitin, obsessed with developing an absolutely deadly, undetectable, and untraceable poison for which there is no antidote. But Kalitin becomes consumed... continue