'Inventive' THE TIMES From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Termination Shock and Cryptonomicon, the first installment in a monumental new trilogy--an expansive historical epic of intrigue and international espionage, presaging the dawn of the Atomic Age. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn Rae Bjornberg is raised in post-Revolution Leningrad by her father, a party-line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gun-running and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C. during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

Set against the turbulent decades of the early 20th century, Polostan is an inventive, richly detailed, and deeply entertaining historical epic, and the start of a captivating new series from Neal Stephenson.