Red Sky at Noon

The stunning new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanovs and Jerusalem, set during an epic cavalry ride across the hot grasslands outside Stalingrad during the darkest times of World War II. 

“The black earth was already baking and the sun was just rising when they mounted their horses and rode across the grasslands towards the horizon on fire . . .”

Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines—but is there a traitor among them? The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler’s troops as they push East.

Spanning ten epic days, between Benya’s war on the grasslands of southern Russia and Stalin’s intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya’s intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin’s daughter and a war correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and survival—where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption.

Simon Sebag Montefiore's prize-winning, bestselling novels are published in twenty-seven languages. Red Sky at Noon is the last of the acclaimed “Moscow Trilogy,” which includes Sashenka and One Night in Winter, which was long-listed for the Orwell Prize. Montefiore’s nonfiction books include Jerusalem: The Biography, a #1 Holiday Book Pick on the TODAY show and under option with Lionsgate, Young Stalin, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, and most recently, The Romanovs, which was a New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of the childrens' book series, The Royal Rabbits of London, co-written with Santa Montefiore, which is being developed for a feature film by 20th Century Fox. Visit him at www.simonsebagmontefiore.com or on twitter @simonmontefiore.