Books published by publisher Pegasus Books

A “harrowing” true story of World War II—the forced repatriation of two million Russian POWs to certain doom (The Times, London). At the end of the Second World War, a secret Moscow agreement that was confirmed at the 1945 Yalta Conference ordered the forcible repatriation of millions of Soviet citizens that had fallen into German hands, including prisoners of war, refugees, and forced laborers. For many, the order was a death sentence, as citizens returned to find themselves executed or placed back in forced-labor camps. Tolstoy condemns the complicity of the British, who “ardently followed” the repatriation orders.

Shakespeare in Love meets C. J. Sansom in a historical thriller with a swashbuckling twist―and a hero as you’ve never seen him before. August, 1585. England needs its greatest hero to step forward . . . When he is caught by his wife in one ill-advised seduction too many, young William Shakespeare flees Stratford to seek his fortune. Cast adrift in London, Will falls in with a band of players, but greater men have their eye on this talented young wordsmith. England’s very survival hangs in the balance and Will finds himself dispatched to Venice on a crucial assignment. Dazzled by the city’s masques and its beauties, he little realizes the peril in which he finds himself. Catholic assassins would stop at nothing to end his mission on the point of their sharpened knives―and lurking in the shadows is a killer as clever as he is cruel. Suspenseful, seductive, and as sharp as an assassin’s blade, The Spy of Venice introduces a major new literary talent to the genre―thrilling if you’ve never read a word of Shakespeare and sublime if you have.

An authoritative and immersive history of the far-reaching events in England that led to the sailing of the Mayflower.2020 brings readers the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower―the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World. It is a foundational event in American history, but it began as an English story, which pioneered the idea of religious freedom.The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I’s Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary’s attempts to burn Protestantism out of England, which created a Protestant underground. Later, when Elizabeth’s Protestant reformation didn’t go far enough, radicals recreated that underground, meeting illegally throughout England, facing prison and death for their crimes. They went into exile in the Netherlands, where they lived in poverty―and finally to the New World.Historian Stephen Tomkins tells this fascinating story―one that is rarely told as an important piece of English, as well as American, history―that is full of contemporary relevance: religious violence, the threat to national security, freedom of religion, and tolerance of dangerous opinions.This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the untold story of how the Mayflower came to be launched. 8 pages of B&W illustrations

Conn Iggulden, the New York Times bestselling author of the Emperor, Conqueror, and Wars of the Roses series, returns to the ancient world with a ferociously violent epic.401 BC. In the ancient world, one army was feared above all others. The Persian king Artaxerxes rules an empire stretching from the Aegean to northern India. As many as fifty million people are his subjects. His rule is absolute. Though the sons of Sparta are eager to play the game of thrones . . .Yet battles can be won—or lost—with a single blow. Princes fall. And when the dust of civil war settles, the Spar- tans are left stranded in the heart of an enemy’s empire, without support, without food, and without water.Far from home, surrounded by foes, it falls to the young soldier Xenophon to lead the survivors against Artaxerxes’s legendary Persian warriors.

A sweeping historical novel in the grand tradition of Russian literature that imagines what happens to the characters of Fiddler on the Roof after the curtain falls. The world knows well the tale of Tevye, the beloved Jewish dairyman from the shtetl Anatevka of Tsarist Russia. In stories originally written by Sholem Aleichem and then made world-famous in the celebrated musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, his wife Golde, and their five daughters dealt with the outside influences that were encroaching upon their humble lives. But what happened to those remarkable characters after the curtain fell? In After Anatevka, Alexandra Silber picks up where Fiddler left off. Second-eldest daughter Hodel takes center stage as she attempts to join her Socialist-leaning fiancé Perchik to the outer reaches of a Siberian work camp. But before Hodel and Perchik can finally be together, they both face extraordinary hurdles and adversaries―both personal and political―attempting to keep them apart at all costs. A love story set against a backdrop of some of the greatest violence in European history, After Anatevaka is a stunning conclusion to a tale that has gripped audiences around the globe for decades.

The true story of an orchestra made up of medical professionals that “makes the connection between music and medicine visible and palpable” (Yo-Yo Ma). You may have read about the Longwood Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in the paper or heard them on your favorite radio station. But the LSO is not just any orchestra. It began in 1982 with a group of talented Boston-area physicians, med students and health-care professionals and has since flourished under the leadership of violinist Dr. Lisa Wong, who became president of the LSO in 1991. The orchestra is now a proud, extraordinary group of musicians with fans around the globe. In Scales to Scalpels, Dr. Wong and Robert Viagas chronicle how the musical acumen of these physicians affects the way they administer healing and, in turn, how their work affects their music. What cognitive and emotional shifts occur when a surgeon transitions from the chaos of the ER to the discipline of the orchestra rehearsal studio? What’s it like to make a house call to a poor neighborhood in the morning and then play trumpet in a jazz group that night? Does music heal the doctors the way the doctors heal their patients? How does practicing the art of music transform the art of practicing medicine?

Before Agatha Christie became the world’s Queen of Crime, she stood on the talented shoulders of the female crime authors who came before her. This splendid new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger brings these exceptional writers out of Christie’s shadow and back into the spotlight they deserve. Agatha Christie is undoubtedly the world’s best-selling mystery author, hailed as the “Queen of Crime,” with worldwide sales in the billions. Christie burst onto the literary scene in 1920, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles; her last novel was published in 1976, a career longer than even Conan Doyle’s forty-year span. The truth is that it was due to the success of writers like Anna Katherine Green in America; L. T. Meade, C. L. Pirkis, the Baroness Orczy, and Elizabeth Corbett in England; and Mary Fortune in Australia that the doors were finally opened for women crime-writers. Authors who followed them, such as Patricia Wentworth, Dorothy Sayers, and, of course, Agatha Christie would not have thrived without the bold, fearless work of their predecessors―and the genre would be much poorer for their absence. So while Agatha Christie may still reign supreme, it is important to remember that she did not ascend that throne except on the shoulders of the women who came before her―and inspired her―and who are now removed from her shadow once and for all by this superb new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger.Featuring: Mary Fortune, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Ellen Wood, Elizabeth Corbett, C. L. Pirkis, Geraldine Bonner, Ellen Glasgow, L. T. Meade, Baroness Orczy, Augusta Großer, M. E. Graddon, Anna Katherine Green, Carolyn Wells, Susan Glaspell

A vivid and timely re-examination of one of young America’s most complicated figures: the war hero turned infamous traitor, Benedict Arnold. Proud and talented, history now remembers this conflicted man solely through the lens of his last desperate act of treason. Yet the fall of Benedict Arnold remains one of the Revolutionary period’s great puzzles. Why did a brilliant military commander, who repeatedly risked his life fighting the British, who was grievously injured in the line of duty, and fell into debt personally funding his own troops, ultimately became a traitor to the patriot cause?Historian Joyce Lee Malcolm skillfully unravels the man behind the myth and gives us a portrait of the true Arnold and his world. There was his dramatic victory against the British at Saratoga in 1777 and his troubled childhood in a pre-revolutionary America beset with class tension and economic instability. We witness his brilliant wartime military exploits and learn of his contentious relationship with a newly formed and fractious Congress, fearful of powerful military leaders, like Arnold, who could threaten the nation’s fragile democracy.Throughout, Malcolm weaves in portraits of Arnold’s great allies—George Washington, General Schuyler, his beautiful and beloved wife Peggy Shippen, and others—as well as his unrelenting enemy John Adams, British General Clinton, and master spy John Andre. Thrilling and thought-provoking, The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold sheds new light on a man—as well on the nuanced and complicated time in which he lived.

A monumental new history reveals how the transition of power from Eisenhower to Kennedy marked more than a succession of presidents―it was the culmination of a generational shift in American politics, policy and culture. After winning the presidency by a razor-thin victory on November 8, 1960 over Richard Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s former vice president, John F. Kennedy became the thirty-fifth president of the United States. But beneath the stately veneers of both Ike and JFK, there was a complex and consequential rivalry.In Rising Star, Setting Sun, John T. Shaw focuses on the intense ten-week transition between JFK’s electoral victory and his inauguration on January 20, 1961. In just over two months, America would transition into a new age, and nowhere was it more marked that in the generational and personal difference between these two men and their dueling visions for the country they led. The former general espoused frugality, prudence, and stewardship. The young political wünderkid embodied dramatic themes and sweeping social change.Extensively researched and eloquently written, Shaw paints a vivid picture of what Time called a “turning point in the twentieth century” as Americans today find themselves poised on the cusp of another watershed moment in our nation’s history. 8 pages of B&W illustrations

The startling and sensational true story of the most famous unsolved heist in American history: the theft of $28 million in jewels from the Pierre Hotel.New York City, 1972.Bobby Comfort and Sammy “the Arab” Nalo were highly skilled jewel thieves who specialized in robbing luxury Manhattan hotels. (They once robbed Sophia Loren’s suite, relieving the Italian actress of over $1 million in gems.) With the blessing of the Lucchese crime family, their next plot targeted the posh Pierre Hotel—host to kings and queens, presidents and aldermen, and the wealthiest of the wealthy.Attired in tuxedoes and driven in a limousine, this band of thieves arrived at the Pierre and with perfect timing, they seized the security guards and, in systematically choreographed moves, they swiftly took the night staff—and several unfortunate guests who happened to be roaming around the lobby—as hostages.The deposit boxes inside the vault chamber are plundered and, after the intruders have held the Pierre under siege for almost two hours, the gentlemanly thieves depart in their limousine with a haul of $28 million. But then matters begin to deteriorate. Comfort, Nalo, and their partners begin to double and triple cross one another—two absconding to Europe with the bulk of the booty while three are murdered by their former associates.The authorities immediately suspect Comfort and Nalo of masterminding the Pierre ambush and arrest them, but these veteran criminals keep their mouths shut. To ensure that they are not prosecuted, the Lucchese Family funnels a $500,000 bribe to the presiding judge to quash the charges—and to this day The Pierre Hotel caper remains unsolved.A suspenseful narrative of Mafia intrigue, police corruption, and personal betrayal—which concludes with a poignant love affair—this is the true story of the most famous hotel robbery in American history.

A moving and informative narrative of a six-month walk from London to Jerusalem on the centenary of the Balfour Declarations. On the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which was also the fiftieth anniversary of the since the Six-day War and the tenth anniversary of the Blockade of Gaza, Justin Butcher―along with ten other companions (and another hundred joining him at points along the way)―walked from London to Jerusalem as an act of solidarity, penance, and hope. Weaving in history of the Holy Land as he moves across Europe, from Balfour and Christian Zionism, to colonialism and Jerusalem Syndrome, from desert spirituality to the lives of his fellow travelers, Walking to Jerusalem is a chronicle of serendipity, the hilarious, the infuriating, and, occasionally, an encounter with the Divine.