UPDATE: OCTOBER 2024 Just approved the print edition. Going out to reviewers later this month! Deluxe edition available on website in November 2024.

 

The Tsar's Angel  is my epic novel set in regency St. Petersburg. It's the story of Anna, an assassin in the thrall of her father on a mission to kill the Tsar, who falls for a Russian army officer, Gavril Kasperevich Danilov. He must choose to save the woman he's given his heart to, or the ruler who can restore his lands and the fortunes of the people living there.

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As you may have guessed, Russia fascinates me. I first fell under the spell of the Motherland after meeting my husband’s family who were few in number but all highly memorable. Through my reading of histories like Natasha’s Dance and Life on the Russian Country Estate and, a contemporary personal narrative, Up from Serfdom, I discovered that my in-laws were quintessential Russians: one thing or the other and nothing between.

 

Boris Starling in his thriller, Vodka, has his heroine sum it up: “…what are Russians if not human beings writ large? There’s duality in everyone, it’s the most universal of human characteristics, and though this isn’t unique to the Russians, they take it to greater extremes than other peoples.”

 

What better material for my dark yet lighthearted, tortured yet community-minded, fatalistic yet eternally optimistic, ruthless yet hospitable characters? And the setting! Russia has everything from magnificent palaces to dark forests, all the better for my adventurous heroes!