'A masterful debut' - Ellen Alpsten, author of Tsarina

In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land ...

... Rosie lived peacefully in Moscow and her mother told her fairy tales. One summer night, all that came abruptly to an end when her father and sister were gunned down. Now, Rosie's only inheritance from her reclusive mother is a notebook full of eerie, handwritten tales, but there is another story lurking between the lines.

Currently studying at Oxford University, Rosie has a fiancé who knows nothing of her former life. Desperate for answers to the questions that have tormented her, Rosie returns to her homeland and uncovers a devastating family history which spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin's purges and beyond.

At the heart of those answers stands a young noblewoman, Tonya, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions reverberate across the century ...