From one of Russia's greatest authors comes a ferocious and anarchically comic topical tale of life in the Russian army

The truest stories are written in blood. The wanderer knows this, for over the last century he has lived those stories, has seen them scrawled in his blood or the blood of others. Others like those dead Perishables scattered about the noble's courtyard, like those servants of the enemy, mortal and not, lying beside them. And yet...he knows it is only the beginning. They are coming. Servants of the enemy, creatures forged and fashioned for one purpose and one purpose only-to kill anything in their path. And now their path leads them directly to the wanderer, to the Perishables, and to the family he has sworn to protect. The story is not yet finished. There is more tale yet to be told, and more blood needed for the telling of it. The cursed blade has been unsheathed, the lone wanderer wanders alone no longer. A hundred years of hiding, of running, but now it's over. Now, the real story begins. And the blood will flow.

After a remarkable and impressive career in the army Jack Spencer was given a dishonourable discharge, taking the blame for his colonel's blunder. He discovers that there is no place for him in civilian life and, in despair, he begins to look for jobs he considers beneath him. Finally he takes a job as chauffeur and odd job man to a young Brigadier Ashford, who he later discovers is an arms dealer. He makes the most of the job and is soon training troops in South America, as well as selling weapons for a revolution. Jack is convinced it is all quite legal and is sent to Africa, only to find himself mixed up in a violent and bloody uprising involving Ashford himself. Narrowly escaping a firing squad he returns to South America to sort out what was left after the rapid but successful revolution. He is appointed Head of Security for the new President but soon discovers that both the old exiled president and a mining tycoon have designs to seize the running of the country. Jack's task is to prevent them.

Between the French Indochina war of the fifties and the fall of Phnom Penn and Saigon in 1975, 134 photographers from different nations were killed. Horst Faas, two-times Pullitzer Prize winner and Chief Photographer for The Associated Press in Saigon at the height of the war, and Tim Page, another veteran who had been badly wounded, have gathered many thousands of photos from the Western agencies and from archives in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. These have now been assembled to form both a monument to the dead and a record of the most terrifying war photography ever taken. Never again will the media have the kind of access to the war zone that was offered to the photographers in Vietnam. In many cases the photographers tried to get as close as possible, then paid the price.

In Requiem for a Good Soldier, Lecouras introduces us to Libby and Bobby, unlikely lovers who find each other amid the turbulence and confusion borne of the Vietnam era, ending with Libby more haunted than ever, and Bobby failing to escape his past.Requiem and The A & P and Beyond share a hard-working police officer. A & P probes further into the life of this married family man who unwittingly sets off a chain of events in the life of a madwoman.In Freedom Road, Mark is bored with his marriage when he meets Celeste. Mark distracts himself by chasing other women until he is unable to resist any longer when both find their own versions of freedom.His Sister's Keeper introduces us to Marvin and Hazel Hart and their children, a devout born-again Christian family living in western Pennsylvania in the midst of rising taxes and stagnant wages. Marvin is torn between trying to keep his marriage together and the needs of his hapless and demented sister, Rosie, and her children.