Nina Nikolaevna Berberova

"In Cape of Storms, now translated for the first time, the great Russian writer Nina Berberova portrays a very specific generation - one born in Russia, displaced by the Revolution, and trying to adapt to a new home, Paris. Three sisters - Dasha, Sonia, and Zai - share the same father, Tiagen, an attractive, weak-willed, womanizing White Russian, but each thinks differently about her inner world of belief and aspiration and each chooses a different path."--BOOK JACKET. "Cape of Storms is a shattering book, which opens with a hair-raising scene of Dasha witnessing her mother's murder at the hands of Bolshevik thugs, and ends as the blitzkrieg sweeps towards Paris."--BOOK JACKET.

Spirited young Anne Wicklow left her post as housekeeper at a fashionable girls school to look after the safety of one of her charges who was suddenly taken to gloomy Chateau Moura by her strange guardian. But once at Moura, the shadowy secrets, haunting legends and hostile inhabitants of that terror-filled mansion quickly enveloped Anne herself in a menacing situation that threatened her own life and sanity. At the center of this hidden danger stood the virile, surly master of Moura, Edmond, whose brooding good looks and irresistible fascination lured Anne ever deeper into a love that could prove to be her fatal undoing.

The Ladies from St. Petersburg is only the fourth book by the great Russian writer Nina Berberova to be translated into English. It contains three stories which chronologically paint a picture of the dawn of the Russian revolution, the flight from its turmoil, and the plight of an exile in a new and foreign place - all of which Berberova knew from her personal experience. In the title story the protagonists are taking a vacation, unaware that their lives are about to be irrevocably changed. In "Zoya Andreyevna," an elegant, privileged woman, in headlong flight, just one train ride ahead of the fighting, falls ill among unfriendly strangers. In "The Big City," an emigrant lands in a surreal New York City, a place that is not yet, and may never be, his home.

The Book of Happiness is one of the outstanding novels the great Russian author Nina Berberova wrote during the years she lived in Paris, and by far the most autobiographical. Vera, the protagonist of The Book of Happiness, is seen first in Paris where she leads a dreary life tied down by a demanding invalid husband. She is summoned to the scene of a suicide, that of her childhood's boon companion, Sam Adler. Sam's family had left Russia in the early days of the Revolution and Vera has not seen her friend for many years. His death reduces Vera to a flood of tears and memories of the times before Sam's departure, and thoughts about how her life has gone since. Not a cheerful prospect. Berberova spins the story with a wonderful unsentimental poignancy.

"Now added to the quartet of books by Nina Berberova that New Directions has presented for the delight of American readers is this very special baker's dozen - Billancourt Tales. These are thirteen stories chosen from those she wrote in Paris between 1928 and 1940 for the emigre newspaper The Latest News.". "Billancourt, a highly industrialized suburb of Paris, gave Berberova her subject. Here thousands of exiled Russians - White Guards, civilians, and Berberova herself - were finding work and establishing homes away from home with their Russian churches, schools, and small business ventures. Berberova thought the significance of the tales was in their historical and sociological aspects, not in their artistry. But the reader will demur, for these are fine stories, the kind that have lead to comparison to Chekhov. They portray a wide range of human beings and the twists and turns of their various lives."--BOOK JACKET.