November 18, 2021

Murmurating, Toothless Sherlock Holmes, and "Own Goal"


Murmurating, Toothless Sherlock Holmes, and "Own Goal"
In Odder News

In this week's Odder News, Dostoyevsky "failed at almost everything he did," Sherlock Holmes gets a not-so-flattering new look, and Team Russia is not great at soccer.

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Is Dostoyevsky Still Alive?
  • November 01, 2021

Is Dostoyevsky Still Alive?

On the occasion of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky’s 200th anniversary, we visit his adopted city to consider the imprint he left behind.
Dreadful Terror
  • November 01, 2021

Dreadful Terror

Dostoyevsky’s chance visit to a museum led to a chilling, life-changing encounter with an artist long dead, but whose work was very much alive. It would make an appearance in the writer’s next novel. 
New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey
  • February 28, 2021

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey

Moscow's stunning Museum of Hockey and Hockey Hall of Fame is a hidden gem with new investors ready to keep it going – hopefully for a long time to come.
At Home with Dostoyevsky
  • October 30, 2021

At Home with Dostoyevsky

If, for some reason, you ever find yourself in the small town of Staraya Russa, be sure to check out Dostoyevsky's summer house.
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Some of our Books

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas
October 01, 2013

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.

 
The Samovar Murders
November 01, 2019

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.

How Russia Got That Way
September 20, 2025

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.

Moscow and Muscovites
November 26, 2013

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

At the Circus
January 01, 2013

At the Circus

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.

Russian Rules
November 16, 2011

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

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