No Foreign Sky is an intense and compelling tale of love and war set against the savage backdrop of World War II's Eastern Front. Paul Heinrich, Olympic athlete and career soldier, leads a Panzer company spearheading Barbarossa, Hitler's doomed invasion of the Soviet Union. Early victories take him to Kiev, where he falls in love with Vera, a beguiling medical student and Ukrainian nationalist. Leaving her, Paul leads the German army deeper into Russia. Brutal winters and bitter resistance sap the German will and strength. But they press onward-to Stalingrad and disaster. In retreat, Paul witnesses the scope and savagery of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by his countrymen. As he faces his growing uncertainties and doubts, Paul's odyssey evokes the full horror and valor of war in the East. Finally, he must search for redemption amid conflicting loyalties to his sacred oath, his moral code, and the woman he loves. Teeming with vivid characters both fictional and real, No Foreign Sky relates true stories of "that time, that place," their tragic power to shape the past and the future, and their relevance to modern times.

"Generations ago, a single turun explorer discovered a long-abandoned and dwindling population of humans, a devastated colony nearing extinction on a dangerous, hostile world. Now entirely blended into turun society, uman people retain only traces of their original language and customs. Instead, they have become full citizens of the far-flung Ka' Taand, a civilization that depends on both uman and turun sociality...a civilization that is now threatened by vicious enemies from beyond familiar space, enemies neither species understands. When the small half-fighter Nkaastu unexpectedly encounters those enemies during a routine trading mission, Daamon, uman battlecommander sees no choice but to tackle suicidal odds in the hope of giving the worlds of the Ka' Taand time to prepare for renewed attack. Neither Daamon nor his turun captain expect to survive long enough to know whether the sacrifice of their ship has been in vain...until an unknown and much more powerful ship appears, slashing effortlessly through the enemy fighters and saving Nkaastu. But who are these newcomers? And will they prove the allies the Ka' Taand needs...or a new and deadlier enemy?"--Back cover.

Gaultry enjoyed the simple, pastoral life of a hedge witch, where her most daunting task was to travel to the nearby village to purchase supplies. But her peaceful life is shattered when it becomes entangled in an ancient prohpesy--a prophecy which names her and her headstrong twin sister, Mervion, as their nation's salvation...or its destruction.

With this edition Swallow Press presents two of Anna Akhmatova’s best-known works that represent the poet at full maturity, and that most trenchantly process the trauma she and others experienced living under Stalin’s regime. Akhmatova began the three-decade process of writing “Requiem” in 1935 after the arrests of her son, Lev Gumilev, and her third husband. The autobiographical fifteen-poem cycle primarily chronicles a mother’s wait—lining up outside Leningrad Prison every day for seventeen months—for news of her son’s fate. But from this limbo, Akhmatova expresses and elevates the collective grief for all the thousands vanished under the regime, and for those left behind to speculate about their loved ones’ fates. Similarly, Akhmatova wrote “Poem without a Hero” over a long period. It takes as its focus the transformation of Akhmatova’s beloved city of St. Petersburg—historically a seat of art and culture—into Leningrad. Taken together, these works plumb the foremost themes for which Akhmatova is known and revered. When Ohio University Press published D. M. Thomas’s translations in 1976, it was the first time they had appeared in English. Under Thomas’s stewardship, Akhmatova’s words ring clear as a bell.

Witness to the international and domestic chaos of the first half of the twentieth century, Anna Akhmatova (1888-1966) chronicled Russia's troubled times in poems of sharp beauty and intensity. Her genius is now universally acknowledged, and recent biographies attest to a remarkable resurgence of interest in her poetry in this country. Here is the essence of Akhmatova - a landmark selection and translation, including excerpts from "Poem with a Hero."

For the first time, the Russian news agency TASS has opened its complete photographic archives to create an unprecedented and uncensored look at the last 100 years of life in the Soviet Union and the new Russia. Featuring more than 300 astonishing photographsmany never before publishedthese images capture the daily life of a people through the dramatic sweep of Russian history, from royalty to revolution and the rise and fall of communism. Illuminated by informative essays and extended captions that provide context on the times and the photographs, this is the definitive visual record of Russian history as seen through Russian eyes.