“Golden specks of sun danced on the high roofs of the villas, on the bathing booths, on the bare backs of children, on a rusty sardine box that lay on a sand...

“On a slushy November evening in 1916, the infirmary priest, Fr. Basil. A small brown beard with a wedge, eyes like those of a five-year-old girl. He hung up...

“It started out ridiculously simple. On one slushy day in St. Petersburg, Vasily Nikolaevich Popov returned home from classes and found a letter on the table...

“The headmistress of the N-Mariinsky gymnasium was sitting in her office and correcting German notebooks. If we consider the office as a frame, and the headm...

“It was in Odessa, in the distant days of my childhood. My younger brother Volodya, despite his six and a half years, was an unusually serious boy. All day l...

“The aroma above the counter was thick and complex: the sprat spread out on the plates smelled tediously in the July stuffiness; the red pies emitted the aro...

“Ivan Petrovich followed his wife’s sharp profile flashing in the mirror, looked at her dragonfly legs and sighed. The door in the hallway slammed. Gone..."<...

“It’s stuffy in the stable. A swallow flies in and out through the wide open upper half of the door. She has a nest above the door - five squeaky mouths, the...