For more than two hundred years, the Tsars private and elite soldiers have been the core of order and stability in civilized Russia. The Imperial Life Guards were formed in 1690, and their reputation is legendary. In southern Ukraine in the 1850s, however, the historic canvas of decay and poisonous alliances are weakening traditional monarchies and governments. Political unrest abounds, and medieval processes are giving way to contemporary acts of insurrection, greed and disloyalty. Growing up in a small village, young Samuel Orloff is obsessed with learning everything he can about his fathers secret past, the Imperial Life Guards, and their mission. Amid a sea of chaotic change, Samuels father rescues Charles Kovnik, an injured Imperial Life Guard, from a creek near their home and nurses him back to life. Now mentored by Charles and bound by inseparable events beyond his control, Samuel discovers life paths are not always chosen as revelations about his familys history become just as important as the realization for his future. The Tsars Guard is the compelling story of a boys coming-of-age journey in mid-nineteenth-century Russia as he attempts to fulfill his dream of becoming one of the Tsars trusted Imperial Life Guards.

For more than two hundred years, the Tsar's private and elite soldiers have been the core of order and stability in civilized Russia. The Imperial Life Guards were formed in 1690, and their reputation is legendary. In southern Ukraine in the 1850s, however, the historic canvas of decay and poisonous alliances are weakening traditional monarchies and governments. Political unrest abounds, and medieval processes are giving way to contemporary acts of insurrection, greed and disloyalty. Growing up in a small village, young Samuel Orloff is obsessed with learning everything he can about his father's secret past, the Imperial Life Guards, and their mission. Amid a sea of chaotic change, Samuel's father rescues Charles Kovnik, an injured Imperial Life Guard, from a creek near their home and nurses him back to life. Now mentored by Charles and bound by inseparable events beyond his control, Samuel discovers life paths are not always chosen as revelations about his family's history become just as important as the realization for his future. The Tsar's Guard is the compelling story of a boy's coming-of-age journey in mid-nineteenth-century Russia as he attempts to fulfill his dream of becoming one of the Tsar's trusted Imperial Life Guards.

A riveting account of the last eighteen months of Tsar Nicholas II's life and reign from one of the finest Russian historians writing today. In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. Now Robert Service, the eminent historian of Russia, examines Nicholas's life and thought from the months before his momentous abdication to his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. The story has been told many times, but Service's deep understanding of the period and his forensic examination of previously untapped sources, including the Tsar's diaries and recorded conversations, as well as the testimonies of the official inquiry, shed remarkable new light on his troubled reign, also revealing the kind of Russia that Nicholas wanted to emerge from the Great War. The Last of the Tsars is a masterful study of a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even willfully so. It is also a compelling account of the social, economic and political ferment in Russia that followed the February Revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and the beginnings of Lenin's Soviet socialist republic.

See? All we need is... a map and...some kind of plan. This overcoat is neutral darling, neither Bolshevik nor Menshevik. Just essence of Prole. In Kiev during the Russian Civil War, the Turbin household is sanctuary to a ragtag, close-knit crowd presided over by the beautiful Lena. As her brothers prepare to fight for the White Guard, friends charge in from the riotous streets amidst an atmosphere of heady chaos, quaffing vodka, keeling over, declaiming, taking baths, playing guitar, falling in love. But the new regime is poised and in its brutal triumph lies destruction for the Turbins and their world. And those are the real enemies we face, deep in the shadows. This modern man with no name, no past, no love. This desperate hate-filled man born of loneliness and frustration. This man with nothing to be proud of, nothing he is part of. . .

In this international bestseller investigating the murder of the Russian Imperial Family, Helen Rappaport embarks on a quest to uncover the various plots and plans to save them, why they failed, and who was responsible. The murder of the Romanov family in July 1918 horrified the world, and its aftershocks still reverberate today. In Putin's autocratic Russia, the Revolution itself is considered a crime, and its anniversary was largely ignored. In stark contrast, the centenary of the massacre of the Imperial Family was commemorated in 2018 by a huge ceremony attended by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. While the murders themselves have received major attention, what has never been investigated in detail are the various plots and plans behind the scenes to save the family—on the part of their royal relatives, other governments, and Russian monarchists loyal to the Tsar. Rappaport refutes the claim that the fault lies entirely with King George V, as has been the traditional view for the last century. The responsibility for failing the Romanovs must be equally shared. The question of asylum for the Tsar and his family was an extremely complicated issue that presented enormous political, logistical and geographical challenges at a time when Europe was still at war. Like a modern day detective, Helen Rappaport draws on new and never-before-seen sources from archives in the US, Russia, Spain and the UK, creating a powerful account of near misses and close calls with a heartbreaking conclusion. With its up-to-the-minute research, The Race to Save the Romanovs is sure to replace outdated classics as the final word on the fate of the Romanovs.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Sam Eastland's Shadow Pass. Shortly after midnight on July 17, 1918, the imprisoned family of Tsar Nicholas Romanov was awakened and led down to the basement of the Ipatiev house. There they were summarily executed. Their bodies were hidden away, the location a secret of the Soviet state. A decade later, Pekkala, once the most trusted secret agent of the Romanovs, is now Prisoner 4745-P, banished to a forest on the outskirts of humanity. But the state needs Pekkala one last time. His mission: catch the assassins who slaughtered the Romanovs, locate the royal child rumored to be alive, and give Stalin the international coup he craves. Find the bodies, Pekkala is told, and you will find your freedom. In a land of uneasy alliances and lethal treachery, pursuing clues that have eluded everyone, Pekkala is thrust into the past where he once reigned. There he will meet the man who betrayed him and the woman he loved and lost in the fires of rebellion—and uncover a secret so shocking that it will shake to its core the land he loves.

"The Guard charges" Napoleon gave special attention to this splendid unit - the Imperial Guard - and it became a sort of little army within the "Grande Armée". This study of its organisation is here at its most erudite, like the one on the uniforms and equipment. Discover the uniforms, the equipment, and the weapons used by all those "Grognards", who were launched into a battle as a last resort, at the decisive moment. Explaining how the Guard was organised into Old, Middle and Young Guards, in this volume, the illustrator-researcher André Jouineau shows the colonel-generals, the grenadiers, the chasseurs à pied, fusiliers, velites, flanqueurs, wards, workmen, sappers, doctors, magistrates and foot gunners; in the second volume he shows the centaurs of the Guard's cavalry. This small practical, clear, concise, logical and visual tool is a real vade mecum, intended for imperial history buffs as well as figurine makers. The third volume - a compilation of two dossiers published in the fifth and sixth issues of the magazine "Soldat" - is the new, improved, entirely revised and re-drawn larger version (more than fifty per cent more characters) than the previous work published several years ago now by the authors. In this volume : the last mounted units of the Guard, the follow-up units, the Horse Artillery, the Artillery trains and teams, the Health Service, the Guard HQ Staff but also the Emperor's Household, the Emperor and the first uniforms of the Royal Guard.

“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it.”—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist Scandal! Intrigue! Cossacks! Here the world’s most engaging royal historian chronicles the world’s most fascinating imperial dynasty: the Romanovs, whose three-hundred-year reign was remarkable for its shocking violence, spectacular excess, and unimaginable venality. In this incredibly entertaining history, Michael Farquhar collects the best, most captivating true tales of Romanov iniquity. We meet Catherine the Great, with her endless parade of virile young lovers (none of them of the equine variety); her unhinged son, Paul I, who ordered the bones of one of his mother’s paramours dug out of its grave and tossed into a gorge; and Grigori Rasputin, the “Mad Monk,” whose mesmeric domination of the last of the Romanov tsars helped lead to the monarchy’s undoing. From Peter the Great’s penchant for personally beheading his recalcitrant subjects (he kept the severed head of one of his mistresses pickled in alcohol) to Nicholas and Alexandra’s brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Secret Lives of the Tsars captures all the splendor and infamy that was Imperial Russia. Praise for Secret Lives of the Tsars “An accessible, exciting narrative . . . Highly recommended for generalists interested in Russian history and those who enjoy the seamier side of past lives.”—Library Journal (starred review) “An excellent condensed version of Russian history . . . a fine tale of history and scandal . . . sure to please general readers and monarchy buffs alike.”—Publishers Weekly “Tales from the nasty lives of global royalty . . . an easy-reading, lightweight history lesson.”—Kirkus Reviews “Readers of this book may get a sense of why Russians are so tolerant of tyrants like Stalin and Putin. Given their history, it probably seems normal.”—The Washington Post

Award-winning and critically acclaimed historian Helen Rappaport turns to the tragic story of the daughters of the last Tsar of all the Russias, slaughtered with their parents at Ekaterinburg.