About the Book Colonel Viktor A. Kovalenko, a widowed honorable Russian Intelligence officer and new commander of the Chelyabinsk military installation, has discovered that a nuclear bomb is missing from the base storage vault. Viktor sets out on a complex and draining clandestine journey to an FBI safe house in Brooklyn, New York, where he discovers that his beautiful daughter Karina, rejected by the Bolshoi but now dancing for the New York Ballet Company, has disappeared. Inspired by Philip L. Rettew’s experience seeing the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan in real time, The Kovalenko Secret is a compelling and richly detailed story demonstrating the nature of current and historical differences among cultures, nations, politics, and religions as an international cast of characters reveals their versions of reality during the most devastating terrorist attack in all of human history. About the Author Philip L. Rettew, after a twenty-five-year career as a technical market analyst working in southern Manhattan, is now retired and living in South Burlington, Vermont. He enjoys playing bridge, photography, cycling, road trips, and improvising music on his baby grand Steinway piano. Rettew is a 1967 graduate of Yale College, where he majored in philosophy and psychology, and earned a master’s degree from Temple University in psychology after a four-year tour of duty in the United States Army Security Agency.

Return to the Motherland follows those who were displaced to the Third Reich back to the Soviet Union after the victory over Germany. At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. Seth Bernstein reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. He uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material. Most notably, he makes extensive use of secret police files declassified only after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. The stories described in Return to the Motherland reveal not only how the USSR grappled with the aftermath of war but also the universality of Stalinism's refugee crisis. While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous. Within Soviet society, returnees met with a cold reception that demanded hard labor as payment for perceived disloyalty, soldiers perpetrated rape against returning Soviet women, and ordinary people avoided contact with repatriates, fearing arrest as traitors and spies. As Bernstein describes, Soviet displacement presented a challenge to social order and the opportunity to rebuild the country as a great power after a devastating war.

Buried deep beneath Antarctica's eternal ice lies a secret that could change humanity's fate. A team of Russian scientists at the Vostok research station makes a startling discovery. Hidden in the glaciers they find an alien capsule containing an unknown virus with cataclysmic potential. From that moment on, a race against time begins to unveil the truth to the world before it's too late. Alexey Marinetto, a skilled counterintelligence agent from Moscow, finds himself unwillingly embroiled in international intrigue after receiving a cryptic message from his friend Igor, head of the Antarctic mission. Pursued by ruthless hitmen, Alexey is forced to spring back into action and immerse himself in a world of conspiracy and deceit he thought he'd left behind. When President Rostov seizes power in Russia, mankind's destiny is threatened by his deranged plans to weaponize the virus and unleash global chaos. To stop Rostov's schemes, Alexey must ally with a mole in the Kremlin and risk it all on an undercover mission in Moscow. Through heart-pounding twists and turns, gunfights, high-speed chases, and a dash of romance between spies, Alexey will find himself battling to save the world in the most remote locations under the most dangerous circumstances. Can he halt Rostov's delusions of grandeur before it's too late? Find out in this adrenaline-fueled spy thriller that will leave you breathless until the final page.

As Russia wages a twenty-first-century war against the very existence of a Ukrainian state and nation, reanimating Soviet-era propaganda that portrayed Ukrainians as Nazi collaborators and fascists, the experiences of the Ukrainian nationalist underground before, during, and after the Second World War gain new significance. While engaged in a decades-long struggle against the Ukrainian nationalist movement and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and lasting into the mid-1950s, Soviet counterinsurgency forces accumulated a comprehensive and extensive archive of documents captured from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the UPA. Volodymyr Viatrovych and Lubomyr Luciuk have curated and carefully annotated a selection of these documents in Enemy Archives, providing primary sources the Soviet authorities collected and deemed useful for better understanding their opponents and so securing their destruction, a campaign that ultimately failed. The documents seized from the insurgents and Soviet analyses of them shed light on a wide range of experiences in the underground: how the movement struggled to maintain discipline and morale, how it dealt with suspected informers, and how it resisted the ruthless Soviet state, laying the foundations for the continuing Ukrainian struggle against foreign domination.

When a different kind of justice is needed -- swift, effective, and personal -- a new type of avenger must take action. Vengeance features new stories by bestselling crime writers including Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and Karin Slaughter, as well as some of today's brightest rising talents. The heroes in these stories include a cop who's seen too much, a woman who has been pushed too far, or just an ordinary person doing what the law will not. Some call them vigilantes, others claim they are just another brand of criminal. Edited and with an introduction by Lee Child, these stories reveal the shocking consequences when men and women take the law into their own hands.

In the heart of Ukraine’s fertile lands, thirteen-year-old Oksana Kovalenko leads a simple life with her family. The rolling fields and rustic charm of her small farming village are all that she knows. That is, until the Soviet Union takes power, and her world is turned upside down. As increasing authoritarianism and threats of land and food confiscation loom, Oksana fights to protect her loved ones from hunger and the loss of everything they hold dear. Her strength and resilience are tested as she is forced to navigate through the chaos, witnessing immense suffering as famine erupts due to the regime’s grain requisition. Threatened with being labeled an Enemy of the State, her family and friends endure persecution. She watches in horror as her village is reduced to starvation and despair. Forming unexpected alliances, she finds courage in friendship as she joins an underground movement that plans covert operations to feed starving villagers. Throughout this ordeal, Oksana grows from a hopeful schoolgirl into someone determined to protect her heritage at all costs. The premise revolves around themes of survival against tyranny, familial bonds in times of crisis, loss of innocence amidst political upheaval, and the resilience required to withstand historical tragedies such as famine and purges that characterized Stalin’s rule over Ukraine. A Grain of Hope reminds us of the human toll of war and oppression and pays tribute to the strength of the human spirit. Oksana’s story will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.