Peter the Great created a navy from nothing but it challenged & soon surpassed Sweden as the Baltic naval power while in the Black Sea it became an essential tool in driving back the Ottoman Turks from the heartland of Europe. In battle it was surprisingly successful & at times in the eighteenth century was the third largest navy in the world
- yet its history & especially its ships are virtually unrecorded in the West. This major new reference work handsomely fills this gap with a complete & comprehensive list of the fleet with technical detail & career highlights for every ship down to small craft. However because the subject is so little recorded in English the book also provides substantial background material on the organisation & administration of the navy its weapons personnel & shipbuilding facilities as well as an outline of Russias naval campaigns down to the clash with Britain & France known as the Crimean War. Illustrated with plans paintings & prints rarely seen outside Russia it is authoritative reliable & comprehensive the culmination of a long collaboration between a Russian naval historian & an American ship enthusiast.E DUARD SOZAEV is an established Russian naval historian with a number of books to his credit. JOHN TREDREA his translator editor & long-term collaborator is an American ship enthusiast with a life-long interest in the Russian navy.
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Praise for Russian Winter. An elegant compelling puzzle of family memory & solitude that brings to life modern day Boston & postwar Russia through a profound love story. Graceful moving & unexpected
- Matthew Pearl author of The Dante Club. A tender & moving debut novel
- Candis Magazine. An impressive debut: intelligent moving & flitting easily between the artistic salons of Soviet Russia & the Boston of today
- Guardian. A memorable love story cleverly disguised as historical fiction
- Red Magazine. Part romance part mystery this elegant debut captures the danger
- & refuge
- of love in Stalins era
- Good Housekeeping.






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This up-to-date dictionary is a handy tool for both native English & Russian speakers who wish to cross the linguistic barrier. It can be used to supplement studies for travel of for commercial purposes or simply as an introduction to a Russian language. ...

In this vast & gorgeous tapestry of a novel serf & master Cossack & tsar priest & Jew are brought together in a family saga which unrolls through centuries of history to reveal that most impenetrable & mysterious of lands
- Russia. Through the life of a little town east of Moscow in the Russian heartland Edward Rutherfurd creates a sweeping family saga from the baffling contradictions of Russia's culture & her peoples
- bleak yet exotic brutal but romantic land of ritual yet riddled with superstitious fears. From Russia's dawn & the cruel Tatar invasions to Ivan the Terrible & the wild Cossacks from Peter Catherine & the days of War & Peace to the drama of the Revolution & the extraordinary events of today
- here is Russia's story in a spellbinding novel
- history recreated with breathtaking detail & passion.



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In this book author Malcolm Tucker delves into the photographic archives of the celebrated motoring historian Mike Worthington-Williams. For over forty years Mike has collected photographs of derelict vehicles; some in scrap yards some abandoned & some neglected but often kept for sentimental reasons. Many are now fading & rusting into oblivion but there are also uplifting tales of resurrection. Old car enthusiasts the world over will know of Mikes reporting of such finds but this is the first time that a book dedicated to his lifetime passion has been published. Over 500 photographs are included each captioned with a brief explanation of the vehicle shown. ...

Meet Tilly Redbrow who doesn't just love horses
- she lives breathes & dreams them too! When gentle pony Rusty arrives at Silver
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As a gun-wielding bank robber Noel Razor Smith was top of the criminal tree enjoying the excitement & benefits of a dangerous & adrenalin-filled career. But hed also spent the greater part of his adult life in prison an environment where respect & basic survival were guaranteed only to those prepared to use the most brutal violence. In his new book Smith takes the story on from his highly acclaimed memoir A Few Kind Words & a Loaded Gun" & describes how he came to realize that the game wasnt worth the candle. In his mid-forties he applied to enter Grendon then the only prison in Britain offering intense therapeutic treatment to hardened criminals. He went from a brutal high-security prison HMP Whitemoor to an institution where he was encouraged to investigate just why his life had been given over to violence & crime. Smith paints an unforgettable portrait of the hardened & severely damaged inmates of Grendon many of them guilty of famous crimes & their attempts to turn round their lives. & in particular his own arduous five-year journey to re-enter society as a straight citizen." ...

Ruth Hilton is an orphaned young seamstress who catches the eye of a gentleman Henry Bellingham who is captivated by her simplicity & beauty. When she loses her job & home he offers her comfort & shelter only to cruelly desert her soon after. Nearly dead with grief & shame Ruth is offered the chance of a new life among people who give her love & respect even though they are at first unaware of her secret
- an illegitimate child. When Henry enters her life again however Ruth must make the impossible choice between social acceptance & personal pride. In writing Ruth Elizabeth Gaskell daringly confronted prevailing views about sin & illegitimacy with her compassionate & honest portrait of a fallen woman.
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At twelve she stood by her mothers grave on a bleak Yorkshire moor. Life as the daughter of a Victorian millhand had never been easy but now she was mother & housekeeper both to the little family left behind. As one tribulation after another beset her life so a longing a determination grew
- to venture out into a new world of independence & adventure & when the chance came she seized it. America even on the brink of civil war was to offer a challenge that Ruth was ready to accept & a love not easy but glorious & triumphant. This is a giant of a book
- about a woman who gave herself unstintingly
- in love in war in the embracing of a new life in a vibrant l&.


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It s no accident my sister carried the can. That murder was organised like a military exercise by experts. Ruth was hand picked. & she shielded those people whod picked her.. .the ones who promised her she wouldnt die. Muriel Jakubait sister of Ruth Ellis Who was the mysterious third man who pulled the trigger? Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain convicted 50 years ago for shooting her lover David Blakely. The case became notorious & was made into a successful film Dance with a Stranger". The story that has held ever since is of a peroxided tart who killed her man out of jealousy. But crucial questions were left unasked in the original trial & the whole case reeks of an Establishment cover-up. Ruth Ellis sister Muriel knew her better than anyone & has always sought to prove she was not guilty. Now she is able to reveal crucial evidence about how a third man pulled the trigger for the fatal shots. A man who was part of a web of British secret agents into which Ruth Ellis fell long before. & at the heart of these new findings is the startling evidence that Ruth was being run by Dr Stephen Ward at least a decade before his name became public in the infamous Profumo Affair. Muriel reveals the full story about her & her sisters abused childhood. She shows Ruth as somebody damaged at a very early age who strove to make something of herself only to be caught up in something much bigger & end up paying with her life." ...