*NOT THE SIGNED EDITION
 
The Stolen Heart : The Kyiv Mysteries (hardback)
by Andrey Kurkov 
 
Samson Kolechko has been assigned a most perplexing case - though it is mostly perplexing because it's hard to understand why selling the meat of one's own pig constitutes a crime. But apparently it does, and at the insistence of the Chekist secret police officer assigned to "reinforce" the Lybid police station, Samson does his diligent - if diffident - best. Yet no sooner has he got started than his live-in fiancée Nadezhda is abducted by striking railway workers who object to the census she's carrying out.

And when you factor in a mysterious thief in the police station itself, a deadly tram accident that may have been pre-meditated, and the potential reappearance of the culprit in the case of the silver bone, it's no wonder the "meat case" takes a back seat. But it is in the pursuit of that petty-fogging, seemingly mundane matter that Samson's fate lies - and Nadezhda's too, for the two are inextricably entwined.
 
Translated from the Russian by Boris Draly
 
UK Reviews for The Silver Bone - Longlisted for the International Booker Prize
 
"Andrey Kurkov is often called Ukraine's greatest living writer, and it is a gift for crime fiction fans that he writes in this genre" New York Times
 
"Wildly enjoyable... A glorious aural portrait of a city in dangerous flux... I finished The Silver Bone wishing to read more" Guardian