siberia (russia)

"Ripped from his home in Eastern Europe, with his father imprisoned in a Siberian gulag, twelve-year-old Natt finds himself stranded with other deportees in a schoolyard in Novosibirsk. And he is about to discover that life can indeed get worse than the horrific two months he and his mother have spent being transported on a bug-infested livestock train. He needs to write to his best friend, Max, but he knows the Soviet police reads everyone's mail. So Natt decides to write in code, and his letters are a lifeline, even though he never knows whether Max will receive them. Every day becomes a question of survival, and where they might be shunted to next. When his mother is falsely arrested for stealing potatoes, Natt is truly on his own and must learn how to live the uncertain life of an exile. Practice being invisible as a ghost, change your name and identity if you have to, watch out for spies, and never draw the attention of the authorities. Even then, he will need luck on his side if he is ever going to be reunited with his family"--Provided by publisher.

A sequel to "Raising the mammoth" that follows scientists as they analyze the freed Jarkov mammoth's remains and search Siberia for clues about the life and extinction of the wooly mammoth.

Contains two novels by nineteenth-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, including "The House of the Dead" which details the horrors experienced by a man imprisoned for murdering his wife; and "Poor Folk," in which Makar and Varvara, second cousins who live across the street from each other, exchange letters in which they describe their terrible living conditions.