“The Book of Riga: A City in Short Fiction” is a collection of short stories by various Latvian authors, all set in the Latvian capital.

“Soviet Milk” is a novel that follows three generations of Latvian women as they try to live their lives and pursue their dreams in a Latvian society under Soviet control. It particularly tells the story of a Latvian woman in the 1980s who strives to follow her vocation as a doctor while facing constant threats of state persecution.

“Doom 94” is a novel about Janis, a teenager growing up in the Latvian town of Jelgava in 1994. The novel begins on 5 April 1994 with the death of Kurt Cobain, which profoundly impacts the local teenagers. Janis turns to a life filled with heavy metal music, grunge, and alternative teenage culture.

“Five Fingers” tells the story of Laura, who was born in a Siberian Gulag camp, where her Latvian parents were deported under Stalin’s rule. At five years old, she is on her way back to her ‘home country,’ Latvia, with her family. Upon arrival, she realises that the Soviet-dominated country is quite different from the fairy tale her parents had described.

“High Tide” tells the story of Ieva, a young and intelligent woman who grows up in the Latvian countryside. She falls in love, marries, struggles with motherhood and her disappointing marriage, and begins a love affair that goes wrong.

In “Return to Latvia”, Marina Jarre searches for traces of her murdered father in and around Riga. She seeks to understand what happened in 1941 when thousands of Jewish people were executed by the Nazis.

Eduards, the protagonist of the novel “Insomnia”, is a somewhat detached man living in Soviet-era Latvia during the 1960s who is forced out of his apathy when a beautiful woman, on the run for an unknown threat, unexpectedly takes refuge in his apartment.

“Flesh-Coloured Dominoes” is an entertaining, somewhat surrealist novel that alternates between the eighteenth century and the Second World War. The novel has two plot lines. The first is about an orphan boy in Riga during the 1940s, who experiences how the invading Nazi and Soviet armies determine people’s fates purely based on their ethnicity. The second plot follows a Baltic German woman in Vidzeme in the 18th century, who tries to find her husband after he does not return from war.

“A Woman in Amber” is an autobiographical memoir by Agate Nesaule. The first part of the book describes the writer’s experiences as a refugee following the Soviet invasion of Latvia in 1940, her life in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany, and her emigration to the United States after the Second World War. The second part of the book focuses on her experiences in Indianapolis during the 1950s.

It is 1968. A young Estonian woman takes the train to Riga to pose for a famous sculptor. They fall in love, but he must go to Moscow to arrange a solution for his military service, while she stays at his home in Riga. Although she is not interested in politics, her life is disrupted when Soviet troops occupy Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring.