1942, and the battle for Stalingrad is just beginning: this is historical fiction at its finest and most epic by Simon Sebag Montefiore, global bestselling author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Jerusalem and The Romanovs.

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 enrols in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a desperate mission behind enemy lines.

Switching between Benya's war in the grasslands of Southern Russia, and Stalin's plans in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a journalist also on the Eastern Front, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery and human survival where personal betrayal is a constant companion, and death just a heartbeat away.

‘An epic adventure story set against the most awful war in history. Ridiculously good’ Dan Snow

'Red Sky at Noon is an epic adventure story set against the backdrop of the most awful war in human history. The master historian shape-shifting into the brilliant novelist. Ridiculously good’. Dan Snow

'Mythic and murderous violence in Russia…there are power-drunk Nazis and Soviet traitors, including a particularly memorable villain …Written with brio & deep knowledge of its fascinating subject matter… a deeply satisfying pageturner.' - Book of the Month, The Times