In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.

Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether...

In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Gulag," acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway.

Her crime: she is Uyghur. Mihrigul Tursun's story is a powerful testimony of bravery in the face of unimaginable crimes. Her three children were forcibly taken from her before she was taken to a so-called re-education camp. Months later, she could only take two of her children back into her care alive. During her detention, Mihrigul Tursun was physically and mentally tortured and forcibly sterilized. She witnessed inmates being raped and killed. She...