By Eva Stachniak
NAMED the most effective BOOKS OF THE 12 months BY
The Wall road magazine • The Washington Post
From award-winning writer Eva Stachniak comes this passionate novel that illuminates, as in basic terms fiction can, the formative years of 1 of history’s boldest ladies. The iciness Palace tells the epic tale of Catherine the Great’s inconceivable upward thrust to power—as obvious during the ever-watchful eyes of an all-but-invisible servant just about the throne.
Her identify is Barbara—in Russian, Varvara. Nimble-witted and attentive, she’s allowed into the hire of the Empress Elizabeth, amid the glitter and cruelty of the world’s most outstanding courtroom. less than the tutelage of count number Bestuzhev, Chancellor and spymaster, Varvara should be knowledgeable in abilities from lock opting for to lovemaking, studying specially else to listen—and to attend for chance. that chance arrives in a narrow younger princess from Zerbst named Sophie, a playful youngster destined to turn into the indomitable Catherine the nice. Sophie’s future at courtroom is to marry the Empress’s nephew, yet she has different, loftier, extra risky goals, and he or she proves to be extra guileful than she first appears.
What Sophie wishes is an insider at courtroom, a devoted pair of eyes and ears who understands the traps, the conspiracies, and the treacheries that encompass her. Varvara turns into Sophie’s confidante—and jointly the 2 younger women will upward thrust to the head of absolute energy.
With fabulous info and extreme drama, Eva Stachniak depicts Varvara’s mystery alliance with Catherine because the princess grows right into a legend—through an enforced marriage, illicit seductions, and, eventually, the stunning coup to imagine the throne of all of Russia.
Impeccably researched and magnificently written, The iciness Palace is an impossible to resist peek throughout the keyhole of 1 of history’s grandest tales.
Praise for The iciness Palace
“A majestic and wonderfully written story of satisfaction, ardour, intrigue, and deceit that's introduced alive from the 1st web page to the last.”—Rosalind Laker
“At a similar time baroque and intimate, worldly and household, wildly unusual and soulfully popular, The wintry weather Palace deals a flickering glimpse of historical past in the course of the gauze of deft entertainment.”—The Washington Post
“A exciting standpoint . . . Readers are handled to a firsthand account of the younger princess’s gradual ascent to the throne, a direction deliciously strewn with discarded enthusiasts and sanguine court docket intrigues.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“[A] significant, daring old novel . . . This fantastic biographical epic proves the Tudors don’t have a monopoly on marital scandal, royal intrigue, or female triumph.”—Booklist (starred evaluate)
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Additional resources for The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great
Sample text
How she raised her eyes to take in his smart figure, compact and fine-boned, his brown, determined eyes. The silver buttons he had polished. The hands that knew how to give a new life to a tattered volume eaten with mold. She listened when he told her of Berlin, where he had seen his first cameo bindings and where he had heard his first opera. “A bookbinder’s wife,” my grandmother said and sighed when, a few weeks later, my father asked her for my mother’s hand. My grandmother didn’t care for my father’s learning, or his skills.
People were having children right and left, and then wanted others to care for them. Far too many people were taking advantage of the Empress’s good heart. Rubles didn’t grow on trees. Sausages and loaves of bread didn’t fall like rain from the sky. In the Imperial Wardrobe, Madame Kluge told me to make myself useful. ” My embroidery brought me no praise. My stitches were crooked, and I mixed up my colors. My mother did not raise me well, I heard. When I was given buttons to sort and sew on, I struggled to thread the needle, making a knot at the end that was too big and did not hold.
My whole inheritance amounted to a small bundle and a few rubles wrapped in a piece of cloth. The Empress, I kept thinking, promised to take care of me. It was February of 1743, the coldest month of the year, when I arrived at the Winter Palace. The footman with sour breath who had brought me told me to wait, leaving me in the servants’ hall. No one took any notice of me but a palace cat, which kept rubbing itself against my ankle. I saw servants scurrying back and forth, chased by fear. I heard slaps, curses, invisible feet pattering up and down service corridors.