Storks, Pravda, Bolsheviks and Stalin's Children

Our review table has been groaning under an abundance of fascinating new titles this winter, necessitating briefer notes than usual (for links to purchase the titles, please visit our website).

Heading the list is a new work of fiction by Edward Docx, Pravda (Houghton Mifflin, $13.95). Set in St. Petersburg, Docx’s novel offers a Dostoyevskian mix of rich prose, haunting scenery, well-buried secrets and engrossing characters. This is a great bedtime read, but beware, his is a gritty, dark St. Petersburg – not the one you’d want to visit, except through fiction.