nicholas ii, 1894-1917

Biography of the last Russian emperor, known to his people as "Bloody Nicholas" whose inept leadership was one of the reasons behind the revolution and civil war.

A young Jewish girl recalls the good and bad of her life with her mother, sister, and seldom-present father in a village in pre-1917 Russia.

Draws upon new forensic evidence and newly released Russian Secret Service records to reveal the truth about the proposed British rescue of the Rusian Imperial Family and their eventual murder by the Ural Bolsheviks.

In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia. The site was a few miles from the Ipatiev House where the Tsar and his family, and retainers, had been murdered seventy-three years before. Authenticating these bones as those of the Romanovs added yet another chapter to the Russian Revolution of 1917. But when all the testing was done, and the bones were authenticated as those of the Russian royal family, it was discovered that two of the children were missing: one daughter and the son, Alexis, the tsarevich. Which daughter it was could not be determined but it was either Marie or Anastasia. After the bones were identified, fresh rumors persisted that Anna Anderson, who for sixty years had maintained she was Anastasia, really was the only surviving member of the royal family.

When her old nemesis, Viktor, becomes immortal again, Anne is forced to travel into the past, present, and future on a journey that will determine the fate of those she loves.

In alternating chapters, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia tell how their privileged lives as the daughters of the Tsar in early twentieth-century Russia are transformed by World War and revolution.

In alternating voices, sixteen-year-old Chicagoan Anne and handsome, magical Ethan tell of their fated quest to rescue Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia, who tells of her long captivity in the hut of legendary witch Baba Yaga.

Focuses on overlooked evidence from key witnesses and details the Russian Imperial family's last days of imprisonment in Ekaterinburg before their execution.