[Read by Karen Cass] The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators -- her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy -- the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father. As she gradually learned about the extent of her father's brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States -- leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father's regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Spring Green, Wisconsin. With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana's daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana's incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it's a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father's name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.

Product Description: The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators--her father, Josef Stalin...read more

Product Description: At midnight on January 24, 1954, the last step was taken in the armistice to end the war in Korea. That night, the neutral Indian guards who had overseen the prisoner of war repatriation process abandoned their posts, leaving their charges to make their own decisions...read more

Spymaster, defector, double agent—the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post-cold war spy program in America. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, the cold war ended, and a new world order began. We thought everything had changed. But one thing never changed: the spies. From 1995 to 2000, a man known as "Comrade J" was the highest-ranking operative in the SVR—the successor agency to the KGB—in the United States. He directed all Russian spy action in New York City and personally oversaw every covert operation against the United States and its allies in the United Nations. He recruited spies, planted agents, penetrated security, manipulated intelligence, and influenced American policy, all under the direct leadership of Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin. He was a legend in the SVR, the man who kept the secrets. Then, in 2000, he defected—and it turned out he had one more secret. For the previous two years, he had also been a double agent for the FBI: "By far the most important Russian spy that our side has had in decades." He has never granted a public interview. The FBI and CIA have refused to answer all media questions about him. He has remained in hiding. He has never revealed his secrets. Until now. Comrade J, written by the bestselling author of Family of Spies and The Hot House, is his story, a direct account of what he did in the United States after we all assumed the spying was over and of what Putin and Russia continue to do today. The revelations are stunning. It is also the story of growing up in a family of agents dating back to the revolution; of how Russia molded him into one of its most high-flying operatives; of the day-to-day perils of living a double, then triple, life; and finally, of how his growing disquiet with the corruption and ambitions of the "new Russia" led him to take the most perilous step of all. Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.

Traces the story of the double agent who headed Russia's post-Cold War spy program in America, documenting his role in directing spy operations in New York City, recruiting agents, and influencing national policy before his astonishing defection.

A new edition of the study explores the life of 'master spy' Walter G. Krivitsky, who exposed dangers of the Stalin regime to the West and eventually ended up dead of 'suicide' in Washington, D.C., a suspicious event that has raised questions about his last years as a spy. Reprint.

Product Description: What could possibly impel a relatively privileged twenty-four-year-old American-serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1952-to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the still young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman, who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR...read more

A former CIA operative describes his career in American espionage, his firing, his threatened arrest and escape to the Soviet Union, his painful separation from his family, and the high-level political impact of his defection. $50,000 ad/promo.

The author describes the organization of The Order

The dramatic story of the former ambassador from Poland to the United States, who defected weeks after martial law was imposed in Poland in 1981

Recounts the dramatic story of the defection of Elena Alexandra Costa, wife of the first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., because of her desire to control her own life, and to make her own choices for herself and her children