William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (ABC-Atticus)

Nightmare Alley is a classic film noir novel first published in 1946.

For the Russian release of the film adaptation of the book, shot by Guillermo del Toro, the work is published in Russian for the first time.

In the center of the plot is street performer Stan Carlisle.

He perfectly understands the nature of people and successfully pretends to be able to read minds.

The hero's talent allows him to build a career, gain popularity and come up with a grand scam.

At the same time, since childhood, Carlisle has been haunted by the image of the "lane of nightmares."

“Gresham turns the notorious American dream inside out.

His hero hobbles in the dark along the alley of nightmares, hoping to the last - and we hope with him - that the path will not end in a dead end and light will dawn ahead, ”says the Los Angeles Times review.

“Since time immemorial,” he began, and the sound echoed through the tiny closet, “people have been trying to lift the veil that hides the future from us.

Among them, sometimes there are those who are able to peer into the depths of the crystal and see the future.

What's this?

A specific property of a crystal?

Or does the crystal help the seer turn his gaze into himself?

We don't know the answer.

But the visions come, slowly and gradually taking shape, swaying in a misty haze...

Stan suddenly realized that he was looking at a bottle with a drop frozen at the bottom and could not take his eyes off the glass.

Pete's intense focus was infectious.

“But wait!

The hazy outlines are clearing up.

I see meadows and hills... And a boy... a barefoot boy running through the meadows.

And his faithful dog.

“Gypsy…” Stan whispered, unable to restrain himself.

Pete glared at the bottle.

- Happiness... but short-lived.

Darkness is approaching... grief.

Some people... And among them - one.

Wicked.

The boy hates him.

Death... he longs for death...

Stan quickly rushed to the bottle.

It slipped out of Pete's hand and fell to the ground.

Stan, panting, kicked her into a corner."

  • © Azbuka-Atticus

Liam Farrell, "Are you sure you're a doctor?"

(MYTH)

The book by family physician and medical columnist Liam Farrell brings together stories from his practice.

Farrell talks about his working days, modern medicine, professional humor, bureaucracy and patients.

Among other things, he recalls how he first put on a white coat, explains why general practitioners are responsible for a kind of renaissance in medicine, and offers his own version of a dictionary of medical terms.

“In contrast to the cold and hard-won truths of scientific medicine, here everything is vague and indefinite: something needs to be learned from bitter experience;

something cannot be taught;

something requires sympathy and empathy,” Farrell writes of his profession.

The book is intended primarily for fans of medical serials and biographies.

“It was a cold winter night, and the wind was moaning, ruffling the rooftop like a sick man who had an ingrown toenail removed and given too little local anesthetic (come on, we all did that, didn’t we?).

It was one of those nights when doctors cringe like a drop of phlegm on a uvula and move closer to the fire.

And suddenly the phone rang.

- What about the finger?

the voice asked, and no more.

Frankly, I was taken aback by such ambiguity.

"About the finger?"

- I quietly repeated this question to myself, and immediately others poured in: whose finger?

Why is he calling here?

What happened to the finger in the first place?

And yet, my interlocutor had something to borrow: endless self-confidence and an enviable conviction that his voice would be immediately recognized, and his toe would never be forgotten.

Also in the voice was contempt for Galileo, Copernicus and all those who were persecuted in search of scientific truth.

The earth does not revolve around the sun, everything revolves around me.

I, I, I am the Great Panjandrum."

  • © MIF

Islam Khanipaev, "Type I" ("Alpina non-fiction")

Islam Khanipaev is a film director and screenwriter from Dagestan, head of a small local studio.

He is also known as the author of the network project Doug's Diary.

With his help, the cinematographer tells the Russians about his native republic.

Khanipaev's debut story is written on behalf of an eight-year-old resident of Makhachkala and is a story of growing up, overcoming psychological trauma and accepting the world with all its shortcomings.

In the story, the boy grows up with a foster mother and is attacked by other schoolchildren.

Despite everything, he hopes to become a "great warrior" and find his father.

Supports the hero only an imaginary friend - Cool Ali.

“Warrior rule number 30 is: “If your secret is revealed, tell it like it is, like a real warrior.”

I closed myself in the room.

“Arthur,” a voice like a brother sounded outside the door, “Who offended you?

Is it Camille again or someone from the school?

How is it there, Gasan?

Look, brother, how we will do it: you just write me a list of these boys, I will go to school and deal with them.

Good?

I will not beat them, but I will talk to them, and they will run from you all over the school.

I didn't answer.

“Arthur, hey man, there's nothing here.

Don't cry, he said.

“There is no need to cry over this.

I was also beaten at school, then I went to judo and snitched on each of them.

They are all cowards.

Stop crying bro.

I didn't answer again.

Ahmed, nothing.

I'll talk to him, - Mom said and opened the door.

I was sitting on the floor.

When I am angry and serious, I sit on the floor, because real warriors do not sleep and do not rest in bed.

They sit on rocks or grass.

I don't have stones and grass at home either.

But I'm sitting on old Lego pieces.

They're sharp too."

  • © Alpina Non-Fiction

Wu Ming-yi, The Man with Compound Eyes (ACT)

"The Man with the Compound Eyes" is a parable about environmental issues that lead to the destruction of Taiwan's coastline.

It is there that, after the tsunami, the destinies of two completely different heroes intertwine - a resident of a mythical island in the Pacific Ocean and a woman on the verge of suicide.

"This is a work of lyrical beauty that combines fantasy, reality and a dystopian environmental saga," reads the official blurb.

The work was first published in 2011.

Its author, Wu Ming-yi, is a professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at Donghua University and an environmental activist.

He was inspired to write this story by real events - the writer read the news, which spoke of a huge garbage whirlpool in the Pacific Ocean.

It was this image that the author remembered that eventually developed into a book.

“If you look at it, there were only two huge waves, and they came in turn: first one, then the other.

Then everything calmed down again, the sandy beach appeared again.

But the beach has changed beyond recognition: it was littered with all sorts of unusual objects.

It was like being on a distant planet.

As soon as A-han came ashore and made sure that Lily was all right, he asked the villagers to look after her, and then immediately took a camera to capture this strange picture.

When the camera lens was aimed at the House by the Sea, a dead egret was captured in the frame.

A-han showed her close-up.

He had been to an ornithological club before, and to his surprise, he recognized a rare yellow-billed heron, so A-han, out of self-interest, decided to hold the frame on it a little longer.

At that moment, a sodden kitten, a black and white minke whale, climbed out of a gap in the fallen wall and made his way from the left corner of the frame to the right.

  • © AST

Ilya Leenson, "Four ladies and a young man in a vacuum: Non-standard problems about everything in the world" ("Alpina non-fiction")

The book by chemist Ilya Leenson contains a variety of tasks from the field of chemistry, astronomy, cryptography, Scandinavian mythology and other fields of knowledge.

With their help, readers will be able to train their intellect and make sure that the division of sciences into the humanities and natural sciences is a stereotype.

It is expected that the publication will be interesting for both schoolchildren and adults.

The editor-in-chief of the journal "Chemistry and Life" notes that Ilya Leenson had a great talent, which allowed him to come up with interesting and intriguing problems "from the air, just looking around."

The puzzles were combined into a collection thanks to the wife of a scientist who died in 2019.

According to Maxim Krongauz, a professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University and the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Leenson himself “dreamed of collecting his tasks, witty and always unusual, into one book, but did not have time.”

“In the 1990s, new international car numbers began to be introduced in Russia.

In the previous numbers (for example, O 2144 MT on the old machine of the author of the problem) almost all letters of the Russian alphabet were used (except for such exotic letters as Й, Ь, Ъ).

The new numbers were supposed to contain only such letters, the outline of which coincides in the Russian and Latin alphabets.

Here is an example of such a number: U 025 XO 77 RUS.

(The number 77 is the code for the region, in this case it is the code for Moscow.)

Soon a new index was introduced - 99, then 97, then three-digit indices appeared (177, 199, 197, 777, 799).

Why do you think the Moscow index had to be changed so often?

Support your answer with calculations.

  • © Alpina Non-Fiction

“An extraordinary ordinary miracle.

School stories" (AST)

This book presents the stories of a number of contemporary writers involved in the activities of the charitable foundation of Konstantin Khabensky artists, as well as his wards aged nine to 20 years.

The writer and screenwriter Alexander Tsypkin, actors Renata Litvinova and Sergei Burunov, Khabensky himself and others worked on the collection.

All works are united by the theme of the school.

The authors share their memories of childhood and youth.

It is expected that the book will not only allow readers to get to know well-known writers and artists, but will also help the Foundation's beneficiaries to survive events in which they cannot take part due to illness.

The new book is the second volume released as part of the Extraordinary Ordinary Miracle project.

The stories collected in the first are devoted to the theme of a miracle in everyday life.

The publishing house plans to make the issue of thematic collections an annual tradition.

“I didn’t like going to bed.

Usually, if I didn’t have to get up early, my grandmother allowed me to watch a film with her after the Vremya program.

She scratched the places rubbed with elastic bands of light green tights, I crunched bread sticks, we lay on grandfather's sofa and looked at the screen.

Movies were usually boring, but waiting in bed for sleep was even more boring, and I watched everything.


Once we watched a movie about love.

- What are you watching?

What can you understand here?!

Grandma asked.

I decided to "bend" something and answered:

- I understand.

The thread of love has broken.

Saying this phrase, I knew that I was “giving away”, but I did not expect that my grandmother would burst into tears with tenderness and would then tell her friends about my words for a whole week.

- I thought he was a little fool, staring in vain, but he expressed the essence in a nutshell.

The thread of love has broken.

It must be so...

Since then, my grandmother allowed me to watch even two-part films until late, but I no longer dared to express their essence in a nutshell.

  • © AST