Archangel by Robert Harris [Paperback: Very Good]

Paperback in Very Good condition (421 pages)

Fluke Kelso was once a scholar of promise, but like so many in the highly competitive world of academia, he's never delivered.  But one night, at a symposium in Moscow concerning the release of secret Soviet archives, he is approached by Papu Rapava, a former Kremlin bodyguard with a story to tell.  No one but the desperate Kelso would believe the tale, for what Rapava describes is a sort of Holy Grail among researchers: an actual diary left by Joseph Stalin himself.  Such an artifact, if it's genuine - and if Kelso can survive the fascist Vladimir Mamantov, who wants it for his own agenda - would be the coup of a lifetime for the discredited researcher.