In which we review a mystery, a Gulag guard's memoir, a parable of the avant-garde, and a collection of Valentin Rasputin's prose.

In which we review 12 titles that have been teetering in our review pile and that Russophiles should love.

Reviews of "Lenin on the Train," "Don't Let my Baby Do Rodeo," and "Mother Tongue".

Reviews of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson. Also short reviews of The Man with the Poison Gun by Serhii Plokhy, Bears in the Streets by Lisa Dickey, and Hard Times by Vasily Sleptsov.

Reviews of books on Putin's Kremlin, two films by Yury Bykov, and a map of Moscow.

Reviews of two books by Teffi and a novel, Masha Regina, by Vadim Leventhal.

In which we review four books: I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives, by Marc Bennetts; Black Wind, White Snow, by Charles Clover; The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep, by David Satter; and The Invention of Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky. All reviews are posted in our Book Reviews section.

Reviews of Mikhail Elizarov's The Librarian, Oleg Kashin's Fardwor, Russia and Konstantin Makovsky: The Tsar's Painter in America and Paris

Reviews of Putin Country, by Anne Garrels, Russian Silver Age Poetry, Sibelan Forrester and Martha Kelley, eds., and Near and Distant Neighbors, by Johnathan Haslam.

Reviews of "The Big Green Tent," by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, "The Gates of Europe," by Serhii Plokhy, and a new translation of "Red Cavalry," by Isaac Babel.

Reviews of Eugene Vodolazkin's Laurus, Stephen Meyer's The New Tsar, and Svetlana Stephenson's Gangs of Russia.

Books we liked, including Dominc Lieven's "The End of Tsarist Russia," Anthony Marra's "The Tsar of Love and Techno," Denise Youngblood's "Bondarchuk's War and Peace," and Jose Alaniz's "Komiks: Comic Art in Russia."