From the acclaimed author of Amelia Lost and The Lincolns comes a heartrending narrative nonfiction page-turner--and a perfect resource for meeting Common Core standards. When Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, inherited the throne in 1894, he was unprepared to do so. With their four daughters (including Anastasia) and only son, a hemophiliac, Nicholas and his reclusive wife, Alexandra, buried their heads in the sand, living a life of opulence as World...

"Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing...

"An accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries,"--NoveList.

"Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters: hiding from the world on account of their mother's ill health, their brother Alexei's secret affliction, and rising controversy over Father Grigori Rasputin, the priest on whom the tsarina has...

Pavel, a vengeance-seeking villager, joins an underground group that assassinates the grand duke of Russia, irrevocably affecting the life purpose of his widow, Elisavyeta.

"On the centenary of the death of Rasputin comes a definitive biography that will dramatically change our understanding of this fascinating figure. A hundred years after his murder, Rasputin continues to excite the popular imagination as the personification of evil. Numerous biographies, novels, and films recount his mysterious rise to power as Nicholas and Alexandra's confidant and the guardian of the sickly heir to the Russian throne. His debauchery...

Chronicles the history of Faberge's imperial Easter eggs and of their maker and the Russian tsars who commissioned them, looking at their craftsmanship and significance both as a symbol of imperial splendor and for the revolution that brought down the Romanovs.