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The Apartment on Lepky Street tells the story of a city with a dramatic history, where the silences about past wars and mass murders are so unbearable that only an abandoned dog can trace the secrets and "speak" for the people who still cannot speak for themselves. The story follows three generations of the family of an old Soviet military pilot – a Korean war veteran – who settle in a city once a cultural centre of Europe, a place variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, and Lviv. The apartment that this Soviet family has inhabited since the '70s is, by coincidence, the former childhood home of Stanislaw Lem. A Polish writer of Jewish origin, Lem is one of the few survivors of the Holocaust in Lviv, who leaves the city forever after World War II. Because it is hard, if not impossible, for the humans to talk about the city's complicated past and their own traumatic memories of Soviet and Nazi atrocities, it is a dog named Dom who accepts the challenge to pick up the pieces of the family story and Ukraine's history.Living in a small apartment with the old colonel and three generations of women, Dom astutely observes the shifting world around him, piecing together for readers the layers of history and uncertain future of this new and strange city. Memory and history cannot remain hidden beneath cement or in the silence of stone walls—not to a dog's senses.Born in a Soviet wool factory, Dom feels just as much of an outsider as English-language readers might to the world of 1990s Lviv – guiding us, as Virgil, through its cobblestone streets. Through Dom's voice, Amelina presents a fresh perspective on critical issues such as the supposed east-west divide in Ukraine, themes of migration and displacement, Lviv's history as a major Polish and Jewish metropolis, its dark history with the Holocaust, and its multiple transformations over the tumultuous twentieth century.

The Apartment on Lepky Street tells the story of a city with a dramatic history, where the silences about past wars and mass murders are so unbearable that only an abandoned dog can trace the secrets and "speak" for the people who still cannot speak for themselves. The story follows three generations of the family of an old Soviet military pilot – a Korean war veteran – who settle in a city once a cultural centre of Europe, a place variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, and Lviv. The apartment that this Soviet family has inhabited since the '70s is, by coincidence, the former childhood home of Stanislaw Lem. A Polish writer of Jewish origin, Lem is one of the few survivors of the Holocaust in Lviv, who leaves the city forever after World War II. Because it is hard, if not impossible, for the humans to talk about the city's complicated past and their own traumatic memories of Soviet and Nazi atrocities, it is a dog named Dom who accepts the challenge to pick up the pieces of the family story and Ukraine's history.Living in a small apartment with the old colonel and three generations of women, Dom astutely observes the shifting world around him, piecing together for readers the layers of history and uncertain future of this new and strange city. Memory and history cannot remain hidden beneath cement or in the silence of stone walls—not to a dog's senses.Born in a Soviet wool factory, Dom feels just as much of an outsider as English-language readers might to the world of 1990s Lviv – guiding us, as Virgil, through its cobblestone streets. Through Dom's voice, Amelina presents a fresh perspective on critical issues such as the supposed east-west divide in Ukraine, themes of migration and displacement, Lviv's history as a major Polish and Jewish metropolis, its dark history with the Holocaust, and its multiple transformations over the tumultuous twentieth century.

From the bestselling biographer and author of the book that inspired the BBC TV series – Jane Austen Rise of a Genius – comes a gorgeously escapist novel about the summer the greatest romance novelist fell in love ‘A glorious romantic retelling’ SUN‘Delicious’ THE TIMES‘The Jane Austen beach book fans have been waiting for' KIRKUS 1801, Sidmouth. The Austen family descends upon a fashionable seaside resort in Devonshire for a six-week holiday. Jane's brother, Frank, is on leave from the Royal Navy, and dearly wishes to unite his sister with his friend Captain Peter Parker. But another holidaymaker, a handsome stranger, catches sight of Jane and is determined to make her acquaintance.This rival to Captain Parker is Samuel Rose: a lawyer, literary man and abolitionist. As the weeks pass, Jane's relationship with both men brings about unexpected surprises. By the end of the summer, the course of her life will have changed forever. ‘I felt like I was reading a Jane Austen’ Kylie Pentelow, Woman’s Hour

From the bestselling biographer and author of the book that inspired the BBC TV series – Jane Austen Rise of a Genius – comes a gorgeously escapist novel about the summer the greatest romance novelist fell in love ‘A glorious romantic retelling’ SUN‘Delicious’ THE TIMES‘The Jane Austen beach book fans have been waiting for' KIRKUS 1801, Sidmouth. The Austen family descends upon a fashionable seaside resort in Devonshire for a six-week holiday. Jane's brother, Frank, is on leave from the Royal Navy, and dearly wishes to unite his sister with his friend Captain Peter Parker. But another holidaymaker, a handsome stranger, catches sight of Jane and is determined to make her acquaintance.This rival to Captain Parker is Samuel Rose: a lawyer, literary man and abolitionist. As the weeks pass, Jane's relationship with both men brings about unexpected surprises. By the end of the summer, the course of her life will have changed forever. ‘I felt like I was reading a Jane Austen’ Kylie Pentelow, Woman’s Hour

'A gripping thriller and Belkin is a character many readers will want to encounter again' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Remarkable … If only all first novels were as enthralling as this' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Merridale’s talents as a Russia expert and writer combine to beam light on the depths of Moscow’s underworld' THE SUN Moscow, 1934. When a body is discovered during the construction of the glittering new Moscow subway, Investigator Anton Belkin wants nothing to do with the case. It will mean asking difficult questions of all the wrong people, and Anton has a very personal reason to keep his head down. But he has not reckoned with Vika, his former lover and now influential member of the secret police, who is adamant Anton is the best man for the job.Buried in the tunnels beneath the capital is a dangerous secret, but one entangled in a sticky web of political and personal rivalries, deceptions and betrayals. Soon Anton must choose between his conscience and saving those he loves from the vengeful grip of the Soviet state.___‘Both a brilliant thriller and a historical record of the ambition, terror and deviousness of that black era in Russian history’ Gareth Rubin, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Turnglass

December 1934. Moscow is in ferment after the assassination of one of Stalin's closest aides, leading to a wave of new arrests and summary executions. Investigator Anton Belkin already thinks he is close to breaking point, when his close friend, the chef Misha Kazakov, is arrested on a trumped-up charge of attempted assassination by poisoning of a senior Moscow official. For Anton the question isn't whether Misha is guilty, but why the secret police want him out of the way.And with Anton's father, a dissenting artist, attracting attention in all the wrong ways, whether Anton can save Misha without becoming ensnared in the ever-more tangled web of conspiracy around him.

December 1934. Moscow is in ferment after the assassination of one of Stalin's closest aides, leading to a wave of new arrests and summary executions. Investigator Anton Belkin already thinks he is close to breaking point, when his close friend, the chef Misha Kazakov, is arrested on a trumped-up charge of attempted assassination by poisoning of a senior Moscow official. For Anton the question isn't whether Misha is guilty, but why the secret police want him out of the way.And with Anton's father, a dissenting artist, attracting attention in all the wrong ways, whether Anton can save Misha without becoming ensnared in the ever-more tangled web of conspiracy around him.

Between 1898 and his death in 1916, the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi painted more than two dozen pictures of his wife, Ida, seen only from the back.This is her story, told from the front.‘An absorbing, often very moving story’ MICHAEL PALIN'Quietly beautiful and deeply felt' JOANNE BURN, author of The Hemlock CureCopenhagen,1898. Danish painter, Vilhelm Hammershøi is on the cusp of greatness. Nobody knows this better than his wife, Ida, who devotes her days to facilitating her husband’s genius.With the news that the great American painter James McNeil Whistler – Vilhelm’s artistic idol – is putting together an exhibition in London, the couple relocate to England in the hope of winning his attention.But here things begin to change. Ida and Vilhelm learn that, on the ladder of ambition, it is possible to lose sight of each other, and themselves. And by the end of the year, a devastating betrayal will define the way the world sees Vilhelm – and Ida – forever.

Between 1898 and his death in 1916, the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi painted more than two dozen pictures of his wife, Ida, seen only from the back.This is her story, told from the front.‘An absorbing, often very moving story’ MICHAEL PALIN'Quietly beautiful and deeply felt' JOANNE BURN, author of The Hemlock CureCopenhagen,1898. Danish painter, Vilhelm Hammershøi is on the cusp of greatness. Nobody knows this better than his wife, Ida, who devotes her days to facilitating her husband’s genius.With the news that the great American painter James McNeil Whistler – Vilhelm’s artistic idol – is putting together an exhibition in London, the couple relocate to England in the hope of winning his attention.But here things begin to change. Ida and Vilhelm learn that, on the ladder of ambition, it is possible to lose sight of each other, and themselves. And by the end of the year, a devastating betrayal will define the way the world sees Vilhelm – and Ida – forever.

A major literary event: available for the first time in an English language edition, an early autobiographical novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gulag Archipelago, which chronicles his service and Soviet Russia's ordeals during World War II. Composed primarily in 1948 while he was imprisoned within the Soviet gulag system's Marfino sharashka, Love the Revolution is an unfinished autobiographical novel that is a snapshot of Aleksandr Solzheniitsyn's life during World War II.On a Sunday morning in June 1941, Gleb Nerzhin, a young man with a deep faith in Marxism who is eager to serve the revolution, arrives in Moscow to enroll in a prestigious institute for the study of history, philosophy, and literature. But world events will transform the course of his life, for this is the very day that Hitler launches his attack on the Soviet Union.Solzhenitsyn originally envisioned Love the Revolution to be an account of his entire military career. Though unfinished, it is an incredible story of conflict, deprivation, and turmoil which illuminates how a true believer's faith in the Soviet system–his love of the revolution–begins to dissolve amid the hardships of war. This earliest of the famed dissident's known prose works stands as an impressive literary achievement and as a harrowing reminder of the chaos and precariousness of wartime Russia.