A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy - as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life. Faith & Humor caused a sensation when it was published in Russia. As Kucherskaya writes in her introduction, "At one convent, the book was burned at the stake. Meanwhile, at a Seminary in...

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha.

A serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev's Moscow, rattling the foundations of the communist state (such anti-social crimes only occur in decadent bourgeois societies, after all).

The victims are as pitifully innocent as the crimes are grievous, and Petrovka 38 runs down one blind alley after another, while its most capable detective, Pavel Matyushkin, is distracted by a frivolous apparatchik.

With twists and turns aplenty,...

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.

Then there is the KGB colonel who seems a bit too interested in the course of Matyushkin's investigation... and Pavel's womanizing office mate, who gets involved with a subject of the case... and a series of petty burglaries that defy resolution... and of course Pavel's complicated love interest, who is as prickly as she is...