Description: Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines--but is there a traitor among them? The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler's troops as they push East.Spanning ten epic days, between Benya's war on the grasslands of southern Russia and Stalin's intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a war correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and survival--where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption.
Brief description: Simon Sebag Montefiore's prize-winning, bestselling novels are published in twenty-seven languages. Red Sky at Noon is the last of the acclaimed Moscow Trilogy, which includes Sashenka and One Night in Winter, which was long-listed for the Orwell Prize. Montefiore's nonfiction books include Jerusalem: The Biography, a #1 Holiday Book Pick on the TODAY show, Young Stalin, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, and most recently, The Romanovs, which was a New York Times bestseller. Visit him at www.simonsebagmontefiore.com or on twitter @simonmontefiore.
Review Quotes: Red Sky at Noon is an epic adventure story set against the backdrop of the most awful war in human history. The master historian shape-shifts into the brilliant novelist. Ridiculously good.--Dan Snow