"Venice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman's body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the Wehrmacht SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand...

Chief Homicide Investigator Arkady Renko's investigation of three mutilated bodies reaches to the highest levels of the Communist hierarchy.

"The choie is simple for Arkady Renko: plunge into the black and limitless Siberian forest in search of a woman who seems to have scorned him or stay in Moscow working as a senior investigator for the office of the prosecution. Tatiana Petrovna, a well-known journalist, had set out to write an exposé on the oligarchs of Siberia, but she has not returned. Arkady pursues her into Siberia, where he learns that she has fallen under the spell of Mikhail...

"In Tatiana, Martin Cruz Smith, 'the master of the international thriller' (The New York Times) creates the most compelling heroine of his career and the most realistic, damning portrait of modern Russia in contemporary literature. One of the iconic investigators of contemporary fiction, Arkady Renko -- cynnical, analytical, and quietly subversive -- has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation...

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly...

In this fourth book in Martin Cruz Smith's splendid series, an amiable Irish American gangster explains to Arkady Renko what he and the other 84 wanted Americans hiding out in Cuba do with themselves. "We try to stay alive. Useful. Tell me, Arkady, what are you doing here?" "The same," says Renko--and it's true. His life as a Russian cop has become so bleak and lonely that he takes any opportunity to shake things up, even spending his own savings...

The year is 1872. The place is Wigan, England, a coal town where rich mine owners live lavishly alongside miners no better than slaves. Into this dark, complicated world comes Jonathan Blair, who has accepted a commission to find a missing man. When he begins his search every road leads back to one woman, a haughty, vixenish pit girl named Rose. With her fiery hair and skirts pinned up over trousers, she cares nothing for a society that calls her...

In The Secret Agent, a Soho shopkeeper is a member of a terrorist cell, supported by a foreign power, plotting to undermine the English state by means of a bomb plot. Published in 1907, it is considered to be among Conrad's finest novels, written at a time when he was moving away from the seafaring themes which he was known for. Prescient in its depictions of terrorism and political instability, it has become mandatory reading for anyone wishing to...

Arranged chronologically, this book discusses one hundred books that have shaped our political, economic, and social lives - for better or worse.

The Retirement Gamble reveals how fees, self-dealing, and kickbacks bring great profits to Wall Street while imperiling the prospects of a secure future for individuals. The film questions who has the consumer's best interests in mind, and whether there is a better way to manage our retirements.