This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressiv...

Fifteen examples of great American true crime writing, edited by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Alex Delaware novels.Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the masterminds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, t...

Both realism and justice demand that efforts to conserve biological diversity address human needs as well. The most promising hope of accomplishing such a goal lies in locally based conservation efforts -- an approach that seeks ways to make local communities the beneficiaries and custodians of conservation efforts.Natural Connections focuses on rural societies and the conservation of biodiversity in rural areas. It represents the first systematic analysis of locally based...

New York Times best-selling author of ten genre-bending novels Jonathan Lethem helms this collection of the year’s best mystery short fiction.For Jonathan Lethem, “crime stories are deep species gossip.” He writes in his introduction that “they’re fundamentally stories of power, of its exercise, both spontaneous and conspiratorial; stories of impulse and desire, and of the turning of tables.” The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 has its full sha...

Christmas has served as a fertile background for mystery fiction for a very long time, perhaps because it has the appearance of a time of peace and love while being so deeply at odds with violence, crime, and even murder.Many of the stories in this anthology have been written by some of the greatest Golden Age authors, undoubtedly inspired by the juxtaposition of the disparate elements of love and hate. There is a cliché about anthologies (and clichés become clichés because they ar...

If the church is more than just a building, what could it mean to live in it--to inhabit it as a way of life? From their location in new monastic communities, Otto, Stock, and Wilson-Hartgrove ask what the church can learn from St. Benedict's vows of conversion, obedience, and stability about how to live as the people of God in the world. In storytelling and serious engagement with Scripture, old wisdom breathes life into a new monasticism. But, like all monastic wisdom, these reflections ...

The New York Times–bestselling author presents a thrilling anthology of devious crimes with stories by C. J. Box, Peter Straub, Joyce Carol Oates and more."Some people might tell you that crime short stories, unlike the more precious kind, are a kind of fictional ghetto, full of cardboard characters and clichéd situations. Not true. These stories are remarkably free of bullshit—although there's always a little, just to grease the wheels," writes guest edit...

"With consistently interesting content and beautiful writing, this collection will be devoured by fans of true crime and narrative nonfiction." — Library JournalEdited by Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst and New York Times–bestselling author of The Nine, The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 is a must-have for the true crime reader, complete with the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant stories of the year by the m...

The Best American Crime Reporting 2010 is yet another must read for the true crime aficionado—an eye-opening compendium of the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant crime stories of the year by the masters of the genre. Guest editor Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics)joins series editors Otto Penzler and Thomas Cook for the latest annual installment in what Entertainment Weekly has praised as the best mix of “the political, the macabre, and the downright brillia...

This anthology of 20 short stories features some of today's best mystery authors—from Lee Child to Jeffrey Deaver and Joyce Carol Oates.For the 2015 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories, guest editor James Patterson presents twenty tales with all the tension, drama, and visceral emotion of Oscar-worthy cinema. These stories features characters who must make desperate choices: an imaginative bank-robbing couple, a vengeful high school shooter, a lov...

A collection of shockingly prescient stories covering topics from aliens to AI, including some that have never before been seen, from the New York Times best-selling author of the Silo trilogyHugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive page-turners of boundless imagination, spawning millions of fans worldwide, first with his best-selling novel Wool, and then with other enthralling works such as Sand and Beacon 23....

A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger and series editor Steph Cha.“This form has a special kind of magic, the ability to transport you quickly, intensely, to capture character, time, place, and story with immediacy,” writes guest editor Lisa Unger in her introduction. The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by ...