Called the greatest of short story writers, Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition.

The violent lives of three sons are exposed when their father is murdered and each one attempts to come to terms with his guilt.

"Fifteenth-century Russia: It is a time of plague and pestilence, and a young healer, skilled in the art of herbs and remedies, finds himself overcome with grief and guilt when he fails to save the one he holds closest to his heart. Leaving behind his village, his possessions and his name, he sets out on a quest for redemption, penniless and alone..."--Dust jacket.

It is the story of Zhivago, poet and physician, and his struggle to keep his family alive in the midst of the overwhelming chaos of the Russian Revolution. And, it is about Zhivago's love for the beautiful Lara, the woman he pursues beyond all reason, the human symbol of life's sweetness and joy.

"In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude," an imaginary crime that defies definition. Cincinnatus spends his last days in an absurd jail, where he is visited by chimerical jailers, an executioner who masquerades as a fellow prisoner, and by his in-laws, who lug their furniture with them into his cell. When Cincinnatus is led out to be executed, he simply wills his executioners...

"Verkhovensky and Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the government, destroy society and seize power for themselves. But when it seems their motley group is about to be discovered, will their recruits be willing to kill one of their own circle in order to cover their tracks?"--Jacket.

As a working mother, Lena Polyanskaya has her hands full. She's busy caring for her two-year-old daughter, editing a successful magazine, and supporting her husband, a high-ranking colonel in counter-intelligence. She doesn't have time to play amateur detective. But when a close friend's suspicious death is labeled a suicide, she's determined to prove he wouldn't have taken his own life. As Lena digs in to her investigation, all clues point to murder--and...

This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous, vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in charge of purging the city of cats.

The narrator and protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel The Adolescent" "(first published in English as A Raw Youth) is Arkady Dolgoruky, a naive 19-year-old boy bursting with ambition and opinions. The illegitimate son of a dissipated landowner, he is torn between his desire to expose his father's wrongdoing and the desire to win his love. He travels to St. Petersburg to confront the father he barely knows, inspired by an inchoate dream of communion and...