Showing results by author "Orlando" in All Categories

No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has changed its story so often. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. To understand what Russia’s future holds—to grasp what Putin’s regime means for Russia and the world—we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history. In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia’s rich history.

While in London, Peaches, Simon’s faithful hellhound manages to grow to the size of a small bus, shocking Monty & Simon with his new transformation. Realizing the danger of a Peaches XL, the Montague & Strong Detective Agency take steps to control these growth spurts. They acquire a special collar to regulate the size shifts, but it’s not working. The situation is growing out of control…literally.

At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants, to soldiers and Napoleon himself.

Michiko Nakatomi, an ancient vampire and leader of the Dark Council, is missing. After giving up control of the blood blades - weapons designed to destroy supernaturals - the Dark Council challenged Michiko’s leadership…and her right to exist. Rising tensions within the alliance of vampires, mages, and weres are threatening to tear the Dark Council apart.

Montague and Strong have left the building. In fact, they’ve left the continent. When a teleportation circle sends them to London, The Penumbra Consortium - and older, darker version of the Dark Council - requests Montague an Strong look into the murder of the leading demonologist Mage Nigel Warrenton.

George Rott wants revenge. After the death of his daughter, Cassandra, he vowed to find and destroy all the dragons. When he locates one of their hidden enclaves within the city, he enlists the help of an angry and unstable demigod to make them all pay. If he launches an attack, he risks angering the dragons, plunging the city into an all-out war, and getting the unwanted attention of powerful gods. Now Simon, with Tristan’s help, must find and stop George before he turns the city into his personal battlefield, killing them all.

In a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in sixty-six societies over time. Slavery is shown to be a parasitic relationship between master and slave, invariably entailing the violent domination of a natally alienated, or socially dead, person.

The terrible conflict that dominated the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, killed at least 800,000 men and pitted Russia against a formidable coalition of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire. It was a war for territory, provoked by fear that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse then Russia could control a huge swathe of land from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But it was also a war of religion, driven by a fervent, populist and ever more ferocious belief by the Tsar and his ministers that it was Russia's task to rule all Orthodox Christians and control the Holy Land.

At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange - they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures.

Hell hath no fury like an angry god of the underworld. Persephone is missing. When Hades fails to locate his wife, he takes drastic measures. He hires the Montague & Strong Detective Agency to locate her, bring her back to him, and most importantly, find out who dared to kidnap his wife. Now, Monty and Strong must uncover a plot to overthrow Hades and steal the underworld, return Persephone to her husband unharmed, and prevent a god from unleashing his wrath and starting a celestial battle royale. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s going to be close.

In Enslavement: Past and Present, historical sociologist Orlando Patterson casts a wide net to examine the social, political, and economic complexities of slavery across different eras and societies. Patterson examines slavery at several levels of abstraction, from micro-level relations of domination to the macro-structures of entire societies.

Broken bodies and bloody messages are appearing in the darkest corners of New York City. Infected werewolves are roaming the streets attacking innocents. The Dark Council demands answers. They summon Simon and Tristan to investigate. The evidence points to the work of a powerful mage, unfortunately, there is only one mage in the city powerful enough to cause this kind of infection - Tristan Montague. Now, Simon and Tristan must locate the source of the magical infection before the Dark Council declares Tristan a dark mage, destroys the werewolves, and shatters the fragile peace.

The Story of Russia is about how the Russians defined themselves―and repeatedly reinvented such definitions along the way. Moving from Russia’s agrarian beginnings in the first millennium to subsequent periods of monarchy, totalitarianism, and perestroika, all the way up to Vladimir Putin and his use of myths of Russian history to bolster his regime, celebrated historian Orlando Figes examines the ideas that have guided the country’s actions.

Just six weeks apart in the spring of 1981, Pope John Paul II and President ­Ronald Reagan took bullets from would-be assassins. Few realized at the time how close both men came to dying. Surviving these near-death experiences created a singular bond between the pope and the president that ­historians have failed to appreciate. When John Paul II and Reagan met only a year later, they confided to each other a shared conviction: that God had spared their lives for a ­reason. That reason? To defeat Communism. In private, Reagan had a name for this: “The DP” - the Divine Plan.

When the NYTF reports that a golem, a large rock creature, is terrorizing parts of the city and destroying hubs of power, Ezra calls on Montague & Strong to investigate and stop the creature. Their first reaction is to refuse. Except there’s one problem. No one refuses Ezra, a personification of death, without grave consequences. Now, Monty and Simon, together with Ursula of the Damned, must uncover how the golem was created and who would use it to destroy hubs of power, without being crushed in the process.

In 1946, after five years as a prisoner - first as a Soviet POW in Nazi concentration camps, then as a deportee in the Arctic Gulag - 29-year-old Lev Mishchenko unexpectedly received a letter from Sveta, the sweetheart he had hardly dared hope was still alive. Amazingly, over the next eight years, the lovers managed to exchange more than 1,500 messages and even to smuggle Sveta herself into the camp for secret meetings. Their recently discovered correspondence is the only known real-time record of life in Stalin's Gulag.

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Children have gone missing in NYC. Detective Simon Strong takes on what he thinks is a routine case - get proof of a spouse's infidelity. When he digs deeper, he stumbles onto the trail of the missing children, but what he discovers shatters his concepts of reality. Tristan Montague is a mage on the run. Hiding from his sect and banned from the magical societies, he follows a trail of missing children to NYC. Now, together with Simon, they must prevent more abductions and stop those responsible for the disappearances.

El siglo XIX europeo, un momento de logros artísticos sin precedentes, fue la primera era de la globalización cultural, una época en que las comunicaciones masivas y los viajes en tren de alta velocidad reunieron a Europa, superando las barreras del nacionalismo y facilitando el surgimiento de un verdadero canon europeo de obras artísticas, musicales y literarias. Llegado 1900, se leían los mismos libros, se reproducían las mismas obras artísticas, se representaban las mismas óperas y se interpretaba la misma música en los hogares.

Meet Simon Strong, an immortal detective about to enjoy a night out on the town. He’s planned this date for weeks and tonight is the night. When Tristan Montague, Simon’s partner and resident cranky mage, advises Simon against this course of action, Simon declares his freedom to see whomever he chooses. There’s only one problem. Her name is Michiko and she doesn’t share well.