Denis Gnedovets

The beginning of the Great Patriotic War. A newly formed company of penal soldiers is thrown into battle after a march. They must walk through a minefield to clear the way for the main combat forces. No one wants to die, but there is nowhere to retreat. Many years later, on the day of the Victory celebration, two veterans meet on the Khodynka Field during a parade rehearsal. Many years have passed, and both have changed a great deal, so they don’t recognize each other right away. The old men remember the one and only real battle with the enemy in their lives — the first one, bloody and brutal. This battle must not be forgotten. Back then, only two survivors remained from the entire penal company...

Dasha is in the eighth grade. She is a very ordinary girl, she has no mother, she lives with her father and younger sister Ulyana. Her father works as a car mechanic and communicates with eccentric clients, and Dasha has to take care of her sister, in which her elderly neighbor Pavel sometimes helps her. Dasha loves to dream. She imagines that she lives in a fairy tale, and the people around her are her fairy tale characters. Once, lost in her dreams and telling her sister a fairy tale at night, she imagined everything so clearly that the fairy tale "came to life": Dasha became Cinderella, and Ulyana became Thumbelina.

Former criminal investigator, Major Korenev, nicknamed Fox is released from prison. He has been detained there as a result of planted incriminating evidence of unlawful investigation techniques. Setting accounts with Shaman - a big criminal boss, who ordered the evidence planted and also with his former colleagues was not a part of Korenev's agenda. As he returns to Moscow he finds a new world ruled by underworld bosses, criminal clans fighting each other and utter chaos on the desperately keeping appearances streets of Russian capital. Facing death of his friends, Major Korenev decides to re-install law and order using some unorthodox methods that are only relevant in 21st century Russia.

The history of Bender's hunt for the underground millionaire Koreiko develops in the 1920s. Bright characters, adventurous adventures and a light veil of a bygone era in a new version of the classic work of Soviet literature.