Russian Historical Fiction Literature

March 1917 tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it.

It is the late 15th century and a village healer in Russia called Laurus is powerless to help his beloved as she dies in childbirth, unwed and without having received communion. Devastated and desperate, he sets out on a journey in search of redemption. But this is no ordinary journey: it is one that spans ages and countries, and which brings him face-to-face with a host of unforgettable, eccentric characters and legendary creatures from the strangest medieval bestiaries.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

A man wakes up in a hospital bed, with no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The only information the doctor shares with his patient is his name: Innokenty Petrovich Platonov. As memories slowly resurface, Innokenty begins to build a vivid picture of his former life as a young man in Russia in the early 20th century, living through the turbulence of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. But soon, only one question remains: How can he remember the start of the 20th century, when the pills by his bedside were made in 1999?

Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survives. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...a young girl lived happily in Moscow with her family: a sister, a father, and an eccentric mother who liked to tell fairy tales and collect porcelain dolls. One summer night, everything changed, and all that remained of that family were the girl and her mother. Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie has an English name, a loving fiancé, and a promising future, but all she wants is to understand—and bury—the past. After her mother dies, Rosie returns to Russia, armed only with her mother’s folklore—and a key.

Filled with unforgettable characters, rich in history and social realism, Anna Karenina is a masterpiece of world literature, a story that fires the imagination and touches the heart.

In the second book of the trilogy, a young English woman comes to Imperial Russia in the early 1900s to become the governess for a noble family. She quickly becomes involved in a romantic entanglement with the master of Skaterniy, but his wife refuses to grant him a divorce. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 erupts into civil war and drives Miss Brown back to England with her young son. But her lover stays behind in Moscow to defend his family estate. Will they ever be reunited, or will fate hold a different destiny for Miss Brown?

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is clearly seen in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle, all of them fully realized and equally memorable.

From an internationally acclaimed author Elvira Baryakina, who masterfully blends in multicultural backgrounds, flamboyant characters of differing nationalities, and mesmerizing plot, comes a new historical novel about an unthinkable turn of events in the early 1920s. White colonialists in Shanghai see themselves as an impregnable supreme race. But then, a horde of strangers enter the city and ruin the perfect world Europeans and Americans built for themselves in China.

St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless, and passionate as Peter himself.

Ellen Alpsten's stunning new novel, The Tsarina's Daughter, is the dramatic story of Elizabeth, daughter of Catherine I and Peter the Great, who ruled Russia during an extraordinary life marked by love, danger, passion, and scandal.

Set in 1852 during the evolving Crimean War – the only time in history when Imperial Russia came into military conflict with both France and Great Britain at one time – this first book of the trilogy tells the story of a nurse who selflessly fights for the lives of her patients, both her compatriots and those of the enemy, while being taken into French-British captivity. Elizabeth must choose between the cozy, quiet inlet and the tempestuous storm… The beautiful but impoverished girl from Moscow struggles to choose between Anthony Weiss - the kind and considerate Odessa doctor, who is...

From the author of the “fast-paced, heartbreaking, and hopeful” (Kristin Harmel, author of The Room on Rue Amélie) The Light After the War, a riveting and heartfelt story of a young woman recruited to be a spy for the resistance on the French Riviera during World War II.

From an early age, it is clear that Alexander Karpenko is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, Alexander and his mother will have to escape Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they have an irreversible choice: board a container ship bound for America or one bound for Great Britain. Alexander leaves the choice to a toss of a coin....

Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters: hiding from the world on account of their mother’s ill health, their brother Alexei’s secret affliction, and rising controversy over Father Grigori Rasputin, the priest on whom the tsarina has come to rely.

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.

The year is 1917. Ten years after leaving his home on bad terms, Klim Rogov returns to Russia to claim his inheritance after his wealthy father's death. Relive the Bolshevik Revolution as a free-spirited man who refuses to desert the woman he loves and decides to remain in the Land of the Soviets, fighting for their lives throughout the bloody struggles of the Russian civil war.

Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.