BBC Russian

New releases in fiction

Halo: Shadows of Reach: A Master Chief Story

A Master Chief story and original full-length novel set in the Halo universe—based on the New York Times bestselling video game series!

October 2559. It has been a year since the renegade artificial intelligence Cortana issued a galaxy-wide ultimatum, subjecting many worlds to martial law under the indomitable grip of her Forerunner weapons. Outside her view, the members of Blue Team—John-117, the Master Chief; Fred-104; Kelly-087; and Linda-058—are assigned from the UNSC Infinity to make a covert insertion onto the ravaged planet Reach.

Their former home and training ground—and the site of humanity’s most cataclysmic military defeat near the end of the Covenant War—Reach still hides myriad secrets after all these years. Blue Team’s mission is to penetrate the rubble-filled depths of CASTLE Base and recover top-secret assets locked away in Dr. Catherine Halsey’s abandoned laboratory—assets which may prove to be humanity’s last hope against Cortana.

But Reach has been invaded by a powerful and ruthless alien faction, who have their own reasons for being there. Establishing themselves as a vicious occupying force on the devastated planet, this enemy will soon transform Blue Team’s simple retrieval operation into a full-blown crisis. And with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance, mission failure is not an option…

Descent

Book 15

The end to his story has already been written…

Brad Steel made a promise to his wife and children—to create a legacy born from his love for them and his desire to protect them from harm. It was a worthy ambition…

But along the way, something went terribly wrong.

Daphne Steel loves her husband beyond measure and will stand by him no matter what, even when it’s more than she can deal with. She escapes when she must, still always putting Brad and their children first.

Mysteries deepen, secrets are unveiled, and Brad vows to continue to protect his family at all costs. But is the price too high? The lies and misdeeds get easier and easier, until he descends to a place he swore he’d never go.

There’s no turning back, though, and his actions have consequences—for those he did everything to protect.

A Time for Mercy

Book 3

Jake Brigance is back! The hero of A Time to Kill, one of the most popular novels of our time, returns in a courtroom drama that The New York Times says is "riveting" and "suspenseful."

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

In what may be the most personal and accomplished legal thriller of John Grisham’s storied career, we deepen our acquaintance with the iconic Southern town of Clanton and the vivid cast of characters that so many readers know and cherish. The result is a richly rewarding novel that is both timely and timeless, full of wit, drama, and—most of all—heart.

Bursting with all the courthouse scheming, small-town intrigue, and stunning plot twists that have become the hallmarks of the master of the legal thriller, A Time for Mercy is John Grisham’s most powerful courtroom drama yet.

There is a time to kill and a time for justice. Now comes A Time for Mercy.

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

Vol 12

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
With the demon threat neutralized, relative peace has returned to Labyrinth City, allowing the residents to shift their focus back to the labyrinth itself. Between the mysterious chain rampages and the untimely appearances of several areamasters, though, the deeper levels prove more of a challenge than anyone bargained for! Looks like it's time for Satou and the others to head back to Bolenan Forest for some specialized training with the elves!

Ascendance of a Bookworm

Vol 9

Rozemyne, now both the High Bishop and the archduke’s adopted daughter, finds herself lost in a position of power she just isn’t used to. Preparing for the Harvest Festival, taking care of new orphans, dealing with the dissatisfaction of a neighboring town—her list of problems just keeps on growing. On top of all that, Ferdinand the High Priest is being as harsh as can be. Still, Rozemyne doesn’t give up! Encouraged by meetings with her lower city family and friends, she recharges by reading books in the temple! She’ll need as much energy as she can get as the yearly Night of Schutzaria is fast approaching, where Rozemyne will need to travel to the forest bordering Dorvan to gather materials...

This is the most action-packed volume of this biblio-fantasy yet! Being the High Bishop is hard, okay?!

Battle Ground

Book 17

THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET SERIOUS FOR HARRY DRESDEN, CHICAGO’S ONLY PROFESSIONAL WIZARD, in the next entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dresden Files.

Harry has faced terrible odds before. He has a long history of fighting enemies above his weight class. The Red Court of vampires. The fallen angels of the Order of the Blackened Denarius. The Outsiders.

But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way.

Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.

The Last Druid

Book 4

Hope blooms anew for the Four Lands in this riveting conclusion, not only to the Fall of Shannara series but to the entire Shannara saga—a truly landmark event over forty years in the making!

Since he first began the Shannara saga in 1977, Terry Brooks has had a clear idea of how the series should end, and now that moment is at hand.

As the Four Lands reels under the Skaar invasion—spearheaded by a warlike people determined to make this land their own—our heroes must decide what they will risk to save the integrity of their home. Even as one group remains to defend the Four Lands, another is undertaking a perilous journey across the sea to the Skaar homeland, carrying with them a new piece of technology that could change the face of the world forever. And yet a third is trapped in a deadly realm from which there may be no escape.

Filled with twists and turns and epic feats of derring-do—not untouched by tragedy—this is vintage Terry Brooks, and a fitting end to a saga that has gathered generations of readers into its fold.

The Return

Nicholas Sparks

In the romantic tradition of Dear John, Nicholas Sparks returns with the story of an injured Navy doctor -- and two women whose secrets will change the course of his life in this #1 New York Times bestseller.

Trevor Benson never intended to move back to New Bern, North Carolina. But when a mortar blast outside the hospital where he worked sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he'd inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any.

Tending to his grandfather's beloved beehives, Trevor isn't prepared to fall in love with a local . . . yet, from their very first encounter, Trevor feels a connection with deputy sheriff Natalie Masterson that he can't ignore. But even as she seems to reciprocate his feelings, she remains frustratingly distant, making Trevor wonder what she's hiding.

Further complicating his stay in New Bern is the presence of a sullen teenage girl, Callie, who lives in the trailer park down the road. Trevor hopes Callie can shed light on the mysterious circumstances of his grandfather's death, but she offers few clues -- until a crisis triggers a race to uncover the true nature of Callie's past, one more intertwined with the elderly man's passing than Trevor could ever have imagined.

In his quest to unravel Natalie and Callie's secrets, Trevor will learn the true meaning of love and forgiveness . . . and that in life, to move forward, we must often return to the place where it all began.

The Trials of Apollo, Book Five: The Tower of Nero

Rick Riordan

At last, the breathtaking, action-packed finale of the #1 bestselling Trials of Apollo series is here!

Will the Greek god Apollo, cast down to earth in the pathetic moral form of a teenager named Lester Papadopoulos, finally regain his place on Mount Olympus?

Lester's demigod friends at Camp Jupiter just helped him survive attacks from bloodthirsty ghouls, an evil Roman king and his army of the undead, and the lethal emperors Caligula and Commodus. Now the former god and his demigod master Meg must follow a prophecy uncovered by Ella the harpy. Lester's final challenge will be at the Tower of Nero, back in New York.

Will Meg have a last showdown with her father?

Will this helpless form of Apollo have to face his arch nemesis, Python?

Who will be on hand at Camp Half-Blood to assist?

These questions and more will be answered in this book that all demigods are eagerly awaiting.

Fatal Fraud

Marie Force

A dangerous truth revealed...

A prominent member of the D.C. community has been murdered, pulling Lieutenant Sam Holland into yet another high-stakes homicide investigation that has her trying to connect the dots between a dead woman and the friends and family who’d turned against her right before her untimely death.

With numerous scandals still fresh within the department’s ranks, Sam is asked to revisit a cold case from her first year on the job that will continue the department’s reckoning with the past well into the future.

All the while, Sam’s husband, Vice President Nick Cappuano, faces mounting pressure to declare his intention to run for president in the coming election, leaving the second couple feeling the strain at home—and on the job as the family endures the first holidays without their beloved patriarch, Skip Holland.

As always, when things become too hot to handle on the job, Sam and Nick turn to each other for solace in the storm.

New releases in nonfiction

Greenlights

Matthew McConaughey

From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction

“Unflinchingly honest and remarkably candid, Matthew McConaughey’s book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did—and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand.”—Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges—how to get relative with the inevitable—you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter. To life.

It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights—and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.

Good luck.

Battle of Brothers: William and Harry – The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult

Robert Lacey

From bestselling author and historical consultant to the award-winning Netflix series The Crown, an unparalleled insider account of tumult, secrecy and schism in the Royal family.

The world has watched Prince William and Prince Harry since they were born. Raised by Princess Diana to be the closest of brothers, how have the boy princes grown into very different, now distanced men?

From royal insider, biographer and historian Robert Lacey, this book reveals the untold details of William and Harry’s closeness and estrangement, asking what happens when two sons are raised for vastly different futures – one burdened with the responsibility of one day becoming king, the other with the knowledge that he will always remain spare. How have William and Harry both agreed and diverged in their views of what a modern royal owes to their country? Were the seeds of damage sowed by Prince Charles and Princess Diana as their marriage unraveled for all the world to see? In the previous generation, how have Prince Charles and Prince Andrew’s own relations strained under the Crown? What role has Queen Elizabeth II played in marshalling her feuding heirs? What parts have Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle played in helping their husbands to choose their differing paths? And what is the real, unvarnished story behind Harry and Meghan’s dramatic departure?

In the most intimate vision yet of life behind closed doors, with its highs, lows and discretions all laid out, this is a journey into royal life as never offered before.