There’s a heavy price to pay for royalty in this compelling—and true—story of Anastasia Romanov and her fellow grand duchesses of Russia, from an award-winning novelist. It’s summer in 1914 and the Romanovs are aboard the Standart, the Russian royal yacht. Tsar Nicholas, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their four daughters, and the youngest child, Tsarevitch Alexei, are sailing to Romania to meet Crown Prince Carol and his parents. It seems like a fairy tale existence for the four grand duchesses, dressed in beautiful clothes, traveling from palace to palace. But it’s not. Life inside the palace is far from a fairy tale. The girls’ younger brother suffers from an excruciatingly painful and deadly blood disease, and their parents have chosen to shield the Russian people from the severity of the future tsar’s condition. The secrets and strain are hard on the family, and conditions are equally dire beyond the palace walls. Peasants suffer under the burden of extreme poverty and Tsar Nicholas’s leadership power weakens. And when the unthinkable happens—Germany declares war on Russia—nothing in Anastasia’s world will ever be the same.

Their names were Olga, Tatiana and Maria..... For nearly a century the life and death of Grand Duchess Anastasia, the daughter of Russia's last Tsar, has fascinated thousands all over the world. Due to the myth of her survival from a communist firing squad, she has arguably emerged as the most famous member of the Romanov family. However Anastasia had three older sisters: Olga, Tatiana and Maria. They are often overlooked by history. Now for the first time ever, there is a book dedicated to these three young women, all slaughtered before the age of 25. This is the story of three individuals born into a world of glamour and eventually brutally dying in a half cellar far away from the palace rooms they once happily ran through as children and teenagers. This is their story.

A 12-WEEK NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Helen Rappaport paints a compelling portrait of the doomed grand duchesses." —People magazine "The public spoke of the sisters in a gentile, superficial manner, but Rappaport captures sections of letters and diary entries to showcase the sisters' thoughtfulness and intelligence." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Days of the Romanovs and Caught in the Revolution, The Romanov Sisters reveals the untold stories of the four daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra. They were the Princess Dianas of their day—perhaps the most photographed and talked about young royals of the early twentieth century. The four captivating Russian Grand Duchesses—Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Romanov—were much admired for their happy dispositions, their looks, the clothes they wore and their privileged lifestyle. Over the years, the story of the four Romanov sisters and their tragic end in a basement at Ekaterinburg in 1918 has clouded our view of them, leading to a mass of sentimental and idealized hagiography. With this treasure trove of diaries and letters from the grand duchesses to their friends and family, we learn that they were intelligent, sensitive and perceptive witnesses to the dark turmoil within their immediate family and the ominous approach of the Russian Revolution, the nightmare that would sweep their world away, and them along with it. The Romanov Sisters sets out to capture the joy as well as the insecurities and poignancy of those young lives against the backdrop of the dying days of late Imperial Russia, World War I and the Russian Revolution. Helen Rappaport aims to present a new and challenging take on the story, drawing extensively on previously unseen or unpublished letters, diaries and archival sources, as well as private collections. It is a book that will surprise people, even aficionados.

Award-winning author Carolyn Meyer's ANASTASIA is back in print with a gorgeous new package! Anastasia is the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia. Anastasia is used to a life of luxury; her major concerns are how to get out of her detested schoolwork to play in the snow, go ice-skating, or have picnics. She wears diamonds and rubies, and every morning her mother, the princess, tells her which matching outfit she and her three sisters shall wear that day. It's a fairy tale life -- until everything changes with the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany. As Russia enters WWI, hunger and poverty grows among the peasants, and soon they are not pleased with their ruler. While the czar is trying win a war and save their country, the country is turning on the royal family. When her father and the rest of the family are imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, suddenly Anastasia understands what this war is costing the people. In the pages of her diary, Anastasia chronicles the wealth and luxury of her royal days, as well as the fall from power, and her uncertain fate.

It is one of the greatest riddles of all time: Did Anastasia, youngest daughter of the last Russian Czar, survive the massacre of the royal family in 1917? James Blair Lovell's painstaking research proves, beyond a doubt, that Anna Anderson--who claimed until her death in 1984 she was Anastasia--indeed was. "Reads like a detective novel".--Publishers Week.

The Sheikh’s Tempting Assistant Laura Bliss is an assistant location scout with no sense of direction—which is how she got stuck with a faulty GPS and the job of scouting sand dunes rather than the oasis her boss is currently viewing. With the sun going down and Laura seriously worrying for her life, she stumbles across a tent that looks more like a palace than a campsite. Dehydrated and burnt, it seems like salvation—until men wearing desert garb and toting AK47’s ride out in jeeps to gather her. Sheikh Raheem can barely believe his luck when an American woman is brought into his tent. He is passionate about his country’s natural splendor, but its PR is in desperate need of a makeover—perhaps as much as the dirty beauty in front of him. He makes an offer: Laura, with her eye for finding the beauty in a location, will help him craft a campaign promoting his country, and when she completes the project he’ll send her back to America with a paycheck she can live on for years. Seeing a chance for financial freedom, Laura jumps at the opportunity. As Raheem shows off the magnificence of his land, Laura finds herself getting swept into a fairy tale full of palaces, five-star luxury, and the most sensuous sex she’s ever experienced. Though she values her independence, the temptation to stay—not just for Raheem, but for the beautiful country that isn’t getting the attention it deserves—holds her in place. But when the country’s natural treasures are threatened, Raheem and Laura must decide what means more to them: their love for one another or their original plans. The Sheikh's Island Fling Anastasia knows she’s been wallowing, but what else can she do when her ex-fiancé slips her three-carat diamond ring onto another woman’s finger? Her sister, however, has had enough of the pity party, and shoves a suitcase in Anastasia’s hand instead. She’s signed Anastasia up for “Recover Love Rehab” on one of those man-made islands in the Middle East. It’s the height of luxury and Anastasia’s last chance to kick her ex to the curb. So, try as she might, the sight of the frothy pink sundress and the promise of relaxation does her in. Maybe her sister’s right. And if Anastasia’s going to move on…why not do it in paradise? Rehaj appreciates the island’s seclusion, but isn’t really looking to Recover Love. Not until he sees the beautiful woman in the villa next door. Despite their chemistry, Rehaj’s knee jerk reaction is to suppress his feelings for Ani. He already has a love: his country, and he doesn’t think there’s room for anything—or anyone—else. Especially not after losing his school sweetheart as a teenager. Yet the couple begins to click as they share activities, share meals, and come to share even more, and their island getaway turns into a passionate escape. The Sheikh's Pregnant Fake Wife Isabella Germain is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She’d agreed to act as her identical twin sister’s surrogate for an IVF procedure because she needed the money to save their sick mother. No one was ever supposed to know, least of all her sister’s husband—Sheikh Feraz bin Haik al Nazrani. But when her twin, Roxanne, is killed in a car accident while jet-setting with some playboy in Europe, Isabella must choose whether to stay silent about her true identity, making her pretend marriage to Feraz real in every sense of the word, or risk losing her baby through a swift rejection and the vicious custody battle that’s sure to follow. When Feraz sees his unborn child on ultrasound for the first time, he’s smitten, even if his relationship with his estranged wife is less than ideal. As Feraz and his wife spend more time together he realizes that she’s a different woman from the person he married—warm, kind, generous to a fault. He’s falling in love all over again, until an earth-shattering realization threatens to destroy it all.

"Describes the life and death of Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov of Russia"--Provided by publisher.