THE WITCHES OF BARGUZIN

First UK edition, first printing. Original blue paper-covered boards with silver titles to the spine, in the Jeroo Roy illustrated dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the extremities very slightly rubbed. The contents, with a little spotting to the top edge of the closed text-block and a tiny amount to the fore-edge, are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper, featuring a wraparound illustration, that is slightly faded to the spine. Not price-clipped (£2.95 on the front flap). Scarce.

The love story of a peasant girl and the son of a political exile who both seek sanctuary with a holy hermit in a forest in Siberia. Kyra Petrovskaya Wayne (1918-2018) was born in Crimea and raised by a single mother in Leningrad after her pilot father was executed by a Bolshevik firing squad. Petrovskaya Wayne studied at performing arts schools before started a career as an actress and singer, but was drafted into the Red Army during the Siege of Leningrad where she became a sniper and a lieutenant. She moved to America in 1946 where she appeared on various television programmes as a singer and to recall her eventful life, which eventually led to her publishing an autobiography, 'Kyra', in 1959. She went on to write 14 more books, primary children's and young adult novels. She continued writing into her nineties; her final book, the story of her mother and father's experiences during the First World War and before the Russian Revolution, was published in 2015.