I just read a fantastic book that was fun and light based on Catherine the Great. It is called Queen Of Someday, it is based on Catherine as a teenager and the start of how she became ruler. I understand it is a young adult read and may not be very historically accurate but I enjoyed myself immen...
"The Winter Palace" is a marvelous historic novel of young Catherine The Great as told from the perspective of a court spy (or tongue as they were called). Varvara tells a moving story of her friendship with the Empress in the years before her rise to power. She offers us a glimpse of what court...
Maybe this wasn't one of the best writing novels i had ever read, but this had one of the best messages. It learnt a lot about power, about being powerful. And sometimes this is something we really need. In most of that world, there are usually two kind of people: leaders and submitters. And Cath...
Eva Stachniak's Necessary Lies is an earnest debut novel that explores the secrets, falsifications, and betrayals that build empires while rupturing the lives of individuals. Set during one of the 20th century's most tumultuous decades, it tells the story of Anna, a lecturer in English from the U...
An alluring, exotic novel set in the early nineteenth century, based on the life of the famous and much-painted courtesan, La Belle Phanariote. Sophie, the Countess Potocki, is travelling with her entourage from St Petersburg to Paris, to consult with French doctors, when she stops at the Berlin ...
It hits just as she lifts her quill out of an inkwell. Her hand freezes. The quill, dropped, stains the letter she was just about to sign.The mantel clock begins to chime. She recalls being frightened as a child to see the hands of a clock turned back, believing time itself might go back and she ...