The Russian Girl

Award-winning writer Kingsley Amis's newest novel is a dazzling romp through a territory he has made triumphantly his own--the battle of the sexes and the conflicting claims of love and integrity. Art, literature, political correctness, and the gender war all come under Amis's seasoned scalpel in this corrosively funny academic satire.

Donation Trade.

“Men speak freely of the women they’ve had, and we’re condemned to silence. Why? Aren’t we as free as you? Don’t we, like you, have the right to take pleasure wherever we find it? . . . They praise seducers in art, poetry, and literature and put a mask of infamy on any woman who’s had many lovers. This is the point where the fight must be fought. Women’s morality must triumph, and that’s what I’m working at . . .” Thus Ariane, unconventional, irrepressible, and irre-sistible, at seventeen the queen bee of the provincial Russian town where, after her mother’s early demise, she lives with her freethinking aunt. But Ariane is tired of breaking hearts in the sticks. Her father may wish to marry her off, but she means to go to the university in Moscow, and she will do whatever it takes to make her way the way she likes. In Moscow, Ariane is in her element. She loves the glamour of the big city. She’s undaunted by its dangers. Before long, she meets Constantin Michel, businessman, man of the world, man-about-town. A new struggle begins.The inspiration for Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon, Ariane has the perverse glitter of Nabokov and the disabused curiosity and keen emotional intelligence of Colette. It is a brilliant exploration—engrossing, unnerving, comic, and cunning—of the matchless cruelty of desire.

A sweeping novel set in war-torn 1928 China, with a star-crossed love story at its center. In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land. Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.

Tatiana L. Dubinskaya’s autobiographical novel of life in the Russian army marked the first major work published by a female World War I soldier in the Soviet Union. Often compared to All Quiet on the Western Front, Dubinskaya’s stark and unsparing story presents a rare look at women in combat and one of the few works of fiction set on the eastern front. Zinaida, a Russian schoolgirl, runs away from home to join the army. Sent to the front, she endures the horrors of trench warfare and the hardships of military life. Undercurrents of revolutionary thinking filter into the ranks as morale begins to crumble. Zinaida must come to grips with the havoc unleashed by the czar’s overthrow and the new socialist government’s attempts to impose revolutionary reforms on the army. Destabilization and desertion follow, and her regiment joins the chaotic mass retreat of the Russian army in the summer of 1917. In addition to Dubinskaya’s original novel, this edition includes selections from her 1936 autobiographical work, Machine Gunner, which she rewrote to satisfy Stalinist censors.

“This scathingly funny comedy of manners” by the rediscovered female Russian novelist “will deeply satisfy fans of 19th-century Russian literature” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). City Folk and Country Folk is a seemingly gentle yet devastating satire of the aristocratic and pseudo-intellectual elites of 1860s Russia. Translated into English for the first time, the novel weaves a tale of manipulation, infatuation, and female assertiveness that takes place one year after the liberation of the empire's serfs. Upending Russian literary clichés of female passivity and rural gentry benightedness, Sofia Khvoshchinskaya centers her story on a common-sense, hardworking noblewoman and her self-assured daughter living on their small rural estate. Throwing off the imposed sense of duty toward their "betters", these two women ultimately triumph over the urbanites' financial, amorous, and matrimonial machinations. Sofia Khvoshchinskaya and her writer sisters closely mirror Britain's Brontës, yet Khvoshchinskaya's work contains more of Jane Austen's wit and social repartee, as well as an intellectual engagement reminiscent of Elizabeth Gaskell's condition-of-England novels. Written by a woman under a male pseudonym, this exploration of gender dynamics in post-emancipation Russian offers a new and vital point of comparison with the better-known classics of nineteenth-century world literature.

"Elegant prose at the hand of an experienced story-teller." -Rhys Bowen, New York Times best-selling author of the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy Mysteries as well as the #1 Kindle bestsellers "In Farleigh Field" and "The Tuscan Child." THE RUSSIAN GIRL is based on the true story of a woman who escapes from a high security nursing home during the hottest day of the year. The thermometer reads 115 degrees and she is dehydrated, lost, slogging through the burning sands of a New Mexico desert, constantly craving an ice cold Coke. Her delirium reveals a harrowing story of a young immigrant Russian girl forced to come to America in the early 1900s. Her turbulent life is filled with upheaval, lost love, and activism in a crushing, brutal 20th century journey. Minna Goldmich's mind wanders, remembering her childhood as a peasant girl in Russia-the youngest in a line of Jewish healers. Her family only survived being butchered by marauding Cossacks because of her and her mother's unique ability to heal cows. The twelve-year-old Russian girl's life is forever changed when she is almost raped. While defending herself, she accidentally kills her Jew-hating attacker and is forced to flee from the only life she's ever known. Alone and traumatized, her mother sends her to America to live. There, she not only joins the great melting pot of people from all over the world, she meets the love of her life and becomes a visiting nurse on the streets of Harlem. But her chaotic life is always overtaken by violent historical events that continue to reshape not only her life, but the world around her. REVIEWS "Intense, harrowing and oh so real, Bette Lamb's family history is brought vividly to life in elegant prose at the hand of an experienced story-teller." -Rhys Bowen, New York Times best-selling author of the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy Mysteries as well as the #1 Kindle bestsellers "In Farleigh Field" and "The Tuscan Child." "A sweeping, soaring saga of history, family, the magic of healing, and the mysteries of love, all wrapped up in a page-turning thriller ranging from the Russian Revolution to the 1980s. Fair warning: you won't be able to stop reading 'The Russian Girl' " -Kelli Stanley, author of "City Of Sharks" "The history of a turbulent century across two continents is set inside an exquisite depiction of the end of one small life. And the brutal, sometimes harrowing, realities of that life are touched by magic in a way that feels utterly believable and satisfying. The Russian Girl combines a sharp eye, a big heart, and an irresistible page-turner of a story. Thoroughly recommended." -Catriona McPherson, bestselling and multi-award-winning author of the Dandy Gilver series and "Go To My Grave" "A beautiful, very thoughtful piece of writing, from the heart." -Rita Lakin, author of "The Only Woman In The Room" FROM THE AUTHOR: I am an RN, and yes, an ex-Bronxite. So listening to me talk (hands flying) can be a funny experience. I love to write crime novels and multi-task because I'm also an artist that plays with clay in my studio in my little home in the West (Marin County, CA.). My sculptures and other artistic creations appear in many juried national and local exhibitions, and I sell my work through galleries, associations, and retail stores. Being an RN is a huge clue as to why I like to write gritty medical thrillers with my husband J. J. Lamb.

Russian Mosaic is the true story of a young girl from a Russian mining town above the Arctic Circle, whose coming of age is marked by tragedy and hardship, but ultimately survival. She spent her childhood and college years under the structured control of the state. With always a bit of rebellion for the lack of freedom and self-expression, she learned to "play along" to get by. As a young adult, she witnessed the fall of communism and the Soviet Union, and with it, the change of lifestyle for all Russians. The daughter of a miner father and an accountant mother, Olga endures a number of ordeals that would have broken others less resilient. From the untimely passing of her father, and through a variety of early life experiences, she learns from her mother not to rely on others, but to be self-sufficient and to make her own way in the world. She not only survives but succeeds and writes with the hope of inspiring other women who face adversity in life.