Martin Sixsmith

When she fell pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary to be looked after as a fallen woman. She cared for her baby for three years until the Church took him from her and sold him, like countless others, to America for adoption. Coerced into signing a document promising never to attempt to see her child again, she nonetheless spent the next fifty years secretly searching for him,...

The full and fascinating story of Russia, from its founding in the waning years of the tenth century to its resurgence of wealth and power in the early years of the twenty-first, skillfully tracing the conundrums of modern Russia to their roots in its troubled past. Covering politics, music, literature and art, the author explores the myths Russians have created from their history and explains the nation's seemingly split personality.--From cover,...

What the nuns did to pregnant teenager Philomena's son was not unheard of in 1952 Ireland. Fifty years after the nuns sold her child to America, Philomena seeks her son. Her son has the same idea. A lawyer for the first Bush administration, the boy who now goes by Michael Hess deals with the secrets he's kept from the Republican Party as he searches for his mom.

"An urgent analysis of the battle between Russia and the West and an exposé of Putin's Russia, by a former Kremlin insider. "I'm a fairly calm fellow; I don't usually get wound up about things. But I was, let's say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn't quite say 'dead or alive'. But it came close..." -Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021 Mikhail Khodorkovsky...