Ruby Sisson Library

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt...

Russia, 1910. Valentina Ivanova is the darling of St. Petersburg's elite aristocracy--until her romance with a Danish engineer creates a terrible scandal and her parents push her into a loveless engagement with a Russian count. Meanwhile, Russia itself is bound for rebellion. With the Tsar and the Duma at each other's throats, and the Bolsheviks drawing their battle lines, the elegance and opulence of Tsarist rule are in their last days. And Valentina...

Elena Gorokhova grows up in 1960's Leningrad where she discovers that beauty and passion can be found in unexpected places in Soviet Russia.

A full color catalog of over 600 seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century French, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, English, Swedish, Swiss, Belgian and American paintings by such masters as Rubens, Van Dyck, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Raphel, Titian, El Greco, Goya, Murillo, Velaquez, Zurbaran and others housed in the Russian museum The Hermitage.

Traces the remarkable history of Catherine the Great's influential art collection and creation of the Hermitage, discussing how her cultural goals were part of a long-term plan to modernize and westernize Russia.

Souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. An actor named Paul Giamatti agonizes over his interpretation of 'Uncle Vanya.' Paralyzed with anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by deep-freezing souls. Paul enlists their services, intending to reinstate his soul once he survives the performance. Complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking mule borrows...

A modern take on one of the most famous stories of all time. In 1805 when we first meet Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, they are all part of St. Petersburg's glittering elite, but are fired up with youthful ambition to find meaning in their lives. As everything they thought they knew is questioned, Pierre, Andrei and Natasha find themselves in a time when Russian society is about to change forever.