50% Tactics – 50% Opening Book – 100% Enjoyment! Enter the world of chess miniatures where games are decided in 20 moves or less! Marvelous Modern Miniatures features the largest collection of miniatures chess games played in the last half-century. Over 500 pages of cut and thrust! Although every player is rated at least 2100, the overwhelming majority are strong masters or grandmasters. You will follow them as they do battle with tactical fireworks raging around them. The surprising depth of the annotations (each one of the 2,020 games has meaningful comments) turns this book into a virtual course on tactics. Looking for traps and pitfalls in your favorite openings? You’ll probably find them here. Marvelous Modern Miniatures will improve your tactical skills and alertness and sharpen your opening play. As a bonus, the entire collection is immensely enjoyable!

Russell Enterprises has been publishing chess books for over 35 years. Although an individual excerpt is available for each of our current titles (see https://www.russell-enterprises.com/russell-enterprises), we thought combining many of them into one eBook would be helpful and welcomed by chessplayers. The result is an eBook which is the equivalent of almost 250 printed pages containing excerpts from 20 REI titles. Each excerpt has the book’s table of contents, introduction, foreword and a selection from the book. We want to thank our readers for their support over the years. We hope you enjoy Chess Books Published by Russell Enterprises: Selected Excerpts.

Innovative and yet traditional, Laura Coombs Hills (1859-1952) was renowned for both her miniatures on ivory and, later, her pastels of flowers. “Queen of Miniature Painters”, “...a veritable John Singer Sargent of miniature painting” and “Dean of Flower Pastels” were merely some of the many accolades ascribed to this New England artist. However, Hills’ accomplishments and contributions to America’s art historical culture entailed so much more. Sense, Sensibility and Sensation: The Marvelous Miniatures and Perfect Pastels of Laura Coombs Hills, America’s Lyrical Impressionist was conceived and written as an atypical art history book to better explore Hills’ many contributions to American culture, with a view toward a broader understanding of Hill’s ethos. Beyond the presentation of her unique, biographical history as an independent, woman-entrepreneur, this book explores Hill’s role in perpetuating a sense of individualism associated more closely with the concepts of home, hearth, and honor of the nineteenth century than the psychological anomie associated with the Modernism of the twentieth, - her own time. In addition, on the pages of this book will be found relevant discussions regarding Hills’ ties to Sense, Sensibility and Sensation, that is, to the idea of individualism associated with nineteenth century miniatures and Walt Whitman’s celebration of America; the notion of beauty associated with Contemplative Romanticism espoused by Edmund Burke; the sentiments of the “Romance poets” (Lord Byron and Percy B. Shelley); as well as the nineteenth century color theories of Michel Chevreul favored by the Impressionists. Moreover, notions of “democratic empiricism”, “aesthetic lyricism”, and Hills’ passion for “symphonic colors” – are all contributory factors which help to identity Laura Coombs Hills as what I have termed “America’s Lyrical Impressionist”.

Rattle your opponents from the get-go! How do you change the Sicilian Defense in your favor? The Sicilian Defense (1.e4 c5) contains countless variations and sub-variations that have been discussed in detail at all levels of play for many years. Even "small" specialized systems have been covered in exhaustive detail in book after book. That is why this book is unique, The Carlsen Variation, which arises after 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4, has never previously been covered in detail before. The variation was uncorked by World Champion Magnus Carlsen in 2018 and has since been played by several other top grandmasters such as Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, and several others. Yet despite this attention, the theory of the variation is largely unexplored and this book aims to set this discrepancy straight. Main lines are established and carefully analyzed with hundreds of new ideas and improvements suggested along the way. For the reader, this book is an excellent resource to get the opponent out of their opponent's "book" into our book. Time to have some fun in the Sicilian - enjoy!

In this book, the authors aim to assist the reader in becoming better at finding combinations, constructing plans, and calculating long, forcing variations. For the purpose of instruction, the material is based on the output of former World Champion Vassily Smyslov (1921-2010), using his endgame compositions from various works and publications as well as several of his practical endgames from games from tournaments and matches throughout his career against players such as Mikhail Botvinnik, Paul Keres, Bent Larsen, Efim Geller, Tigran Petrosian, and several other world-class players

A fun & tricky ambush weapon for Black against 1.e4? In this book, the authors cover the exciting 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6!? which players like Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Richard Rapport, and other strong players have used with powerful effect to drag White players out of their comfort zones into Black's domain. The authors are pulling games from many resources, including their own experiments with the opening to illustrate how it is possible to beat titled players right out of the opening by shocking White's system and beliefs.

A collection of games of 25 moves or fewer by a grandmaster. The accent is on instruction, discussing both how the loser could have avoided disaster and how the winner was able to take advantage so effectively.

Choose from a range of extraordinary mosaic techniques and materials for making 20 exceptional decorative items. Use silicone to apply art glass onto a translucent background for a uniquely shimmering look. Incorporate natural and found objects like fossils and bottles washed up on shore and polished by the sea. Projects include a table adorned with rocks and glass, a mirrored tray, a 3-D decanter, and more.