From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City's creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home-a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art,...

"A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong's protégée and lover--and a poster child for the Cultural Revolution--in this provocative, poignant novel from the bestselling author of A River of Stars On the eve of China's Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished...

In 1948, following World War II, eleven-year-old Anna, her mother, and older sister must flee Czechoslovakia after Russian Communists take over the government. Includes notes about the author's family history, on which the story is based.

Set during the height of the Russian Revolution and told in alternating voices, sixteen-year-old Evgenia--a peasant and proud member of the Bolshevik party--agrees to help a seventeen-year-old bourgeois girl traverse the war-torn countryside in search of safety, but Anna is harboring a secret that could cost them their lives. Includes historical note and author's note.

"Through the life of a remarkable woman--based on pioneering stage director Sun Weishi (1921-1968)--this epic novel immerses us in the multifaceted history of China's Communist Party. Sun Weishi was educated in Moscow and when she returned to China she produced the works of Chekov, Gogol, and other socially progressive dramas. However, when the cultural revolution began in 1966, she was persecuted, arrested, and eventually died in prison."--

"A fascinating narrative of life in communist Romania, and a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of literature and censorship. The Censor's Notebook opens with an exchange of letters between "Liliana Corobca" and Emilia Codrescu, long the female chief of the Secret Documents Office in Romania's feared State Directorate of Media and Printing-the government branch responsible for Censorship. Codrescu had been responsible for the burning and shredding...

"In a gripping World War II mystery set in Washington, D.C., a young naval intelligence officer goes undercover to solve a murder and prevent the Soviets from stealing the secrets of America's atomic bomb project. Washington D.C., 1945. Victory in the war looms, but a new fear transfixes the wartime capital. Fear of communist spies and the atomic secrets they covet. When the corpse of a Navy Intelligence officer is found on a cobblestone back alley,...