A “magnificent and intimate” (Harper’s) modern classic of Russian history, the spellbinding story of the love that ended an empire—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great “A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek In this commanding book, New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of the Russian empire to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.

Russian playwright and historian Radzinsky mines sources never before available to create a fascinating portrait of the monarch, and a minute-by-minute account of his terrifying last days.

“Alexandra’s story is heartbreaking” and this New York Times–bestselling author “excels in the details” in this biography of the last Russian Empress (Chicago Tribune). Taking advantage of material unavailable until the fall of the Soviet Union, Erickson portrays Alexandra’s story as a closely observed, enthrallingly documented, progressive psychological retreat from reality. The lives of the Romanovs were full of color and drama, but the personal life of Alexandra has remained enigmatic. Under Erickson’s masterful scrutiny the full dimensions of the Empresses’ singular psychology are revealed: her childhood bereavement, her long struggle to attain her romantic goal of marriage to Nicholas, the anguish of her pathological shyness, her struggles with her in-laws, her false pregnancy, her increasing eccentricities and loss of self as she became more preoccupied with matters of faith, and her increasing dependence on a series of occult mentors, the most notorious of whom was Rasputin. With meticulous care, long practiced skill, and generous imagination, Erickson crafts a character who lives and breathes. “Entertaining. . . . One of the book’s strengths is its emphasis on the private life of the court.” —Publishers Weekly “Carrolly Erickson is one of the most accomplished and successful historical biographers writing in English.” —London Times Literary Supplement

When Queen Victoria's second daughter Princess Alice married the Prince Louis of Hesse and Rhine in 1862 even her own mother described the ceremony as 'more of a funeral than a wedding' thanks to the fact that it took place shortly after the death of Alice's beloved father Prince Albert. Sadly, the young princess' misfortunes didn't end there and when she also died prematurely, her four motherless daughters were taken under the wing of their formidable grandmother, Victoria. Alix, the youngest of Alice's daughters and allegedly one of the most beautiful princesses in Europe, was a special favorite of the elderly queen, who hoped that she would marry her cousin Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and one day reign beside him as Queen. However, the spirited and stubborn Alix had other ideas...

In the years before World War I, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Carter uses the cousins' correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell their tragicomic stories.

Award-winning author Carolyn Meyer's ANASTASIA is back in print with a gorgeous new package! Anastasia is the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia. Anastasia is used to a life of luxury; her major concerns are how to get out of her detested schoolwork to play in the snow, go ice-skating, or have picnics. She wears diamonds and rubies, and every morning her mother, the princess, tells her which matching outfit she and her three sisters shall wear that day. It's a fairy tale life -- until everything changes with the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany. As Russia enters WWI, hunger and poverty grows among the peasants, and soon they are not pleased with their ruler. While the czar is trying win a war and save their country, the country is turning on the royal family. When her father and the rest of the family are imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, suddenly Anastasia understands what this war is costing the people. In the pages of her diary, Anastasia chronicles the wealth and luxury of her royal days, as well as the fall from power, and her uncertain fate.

Photographs of the life of the Russian Imperial family.

"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.

The extraordinary family story of George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II: they were tied to one another by history, and history would ultimately tear them apart. Drawing widely on previously unpublished royal letters and diaries, made public for the first time by Queen Elizabeth II, Catrine Clay chronicles the riveting half century of the royals' overlapping lives, and their slow, inexorable march into conflict. They met frequently from childhood, on holidays, and at weddings, birthdays, and each others' coronations. They saw themselves as royal colleagues, a trade union of kings, standing shoulder to shoulder against the rise of socialism, republicanism, and revolution. And yet tensions abounded between them. Clay deftly reveals how intimate family details had deep historical significance: the antipathy Willy's mother (Victoria's daughter) felt toward him because of his withered left arm, and how it affected him throughout his life; the family tension caused by Otto von Bismarck's annexation of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark (Georgie's and Nicky's mothers were Danish princesses); the surreality surrounding the impending conflict. "Have I gone mad?" Nicholas asked his wife, Alexandra, in July 1914, showing her another telegram from Wilhelm. "What on earth does Willy mean pretending that it still depends on me whether war is averted or not?" Germany had, in fact, declared war on Russia six hours earlier. At every point in her remarkable book, Catrine Clay sheds new light on a watershed period in world history.

In the darkest days of the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, when all talk of the Romanovs was punishable at the very least by banishment to Serbia, a group of archivists were exempt. They sorted and filed the thousands of letters and photographs of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria), and their five children. In all, some 13,000 letters have survived. Those between 1889 and 1914 have never before been published. They run the gamut from matters of state to intimate expressions of love and longing. In addition there are the letters of their four daughters and their only son, the haemophiliac Alexis, whose health was to introduce the crucial and some say malign influence of Rasputin. The editors also draw on Nicholas's diaries, letters to his mother, and the diaries and memoirs of their close contemporaries. It includes first hand accounts of the murder of Rasputin in 1916 and the assassination of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg in 1918.