Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov

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

New York Times Bestseller "Compelling and utterly fascinating." —Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours An enthralling feat of historical suspense that unravels the extraordinary twists and turns in Anna Anderson's fifty-year battle to be recognized as Anastasia Romanov. Is she the Russian Grand Duchess or the thief of another woman's legacy? Countless others have rendered their verdict. Now it is your turn. 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 survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed. Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water or even acknowledge her rescuers, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious young woman claims to be the Russian grand duchess. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre at Ekaterinburg, old enemies and new threats are awakened. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling saga is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

The truth of the enduring mystery of Anastasia's fate-and the life of her most convincing impostor The passage of more than ninety years and the publication of hundreds of books in dozens of languages has not extinguished an enduring interest in the mysteries surrounding the 1918 execution of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The Resurrection of the Romanovs draws on a wealth of new information from previously unpublished materials and unexplored sources to probe the most enduring Romanov mystery of all: the fate of the Tsar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, whose remains were not buried with those of her family, and her identification with Anna Anderson, the woman who claimed to be the missing Grand Duchess. Penetrates the intriguing mysteries surrounding the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and the true fate of his daughter, Anastasia Reveals previously unknown details of Anderson's life as Franziska Schanzkowska Explains how Anderson acquired her knowledge, why people believed her claim, and how it transformed Anastasia into a cultural phenomenon Draws on unpublished materials including Schanzkowska family memoirs, legal papers, and exclusive access to private documents of the British and Hessian Royal Families Includes 75 photographs, dozens published here for the first time Written by the authors of The Fate of the Romanovs Refuting long-accepted evidence in the Anderson case, The Resurrection of the Romanovs finally explodes the greatest royal mystery of the twentieth-century.

On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only seventeen. Together with their parents and their thirteen-year-old brother, they were all brutally murdered. Their crime: to be the daughters of the last Tsar and Tsaritsa of All the Russias. In Four Sisters acclaimed biographer Helen Rappaport offers readers the most authoritative account yet of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Drawing on their own letters and diaries, she paints a vivid picture of their lives in the dying days of the Romanov dynasty. We see, almost for the first time, their journey from a childhood of enormous privilege, throughout which they led a very sheltered and largely simple life, to young womanhood – their first romantic crushes, their hopes and dreams, the difficulty of coping with a mother who was a chronic invalid and a haemophiliac brother, and, latterly, the trauma of the revolution and its terrible consequences. Compellingly readable, meticulously researched and deeply moving, Four Sisters gives these young women a voice, and allows their story to resonate for readers almost a century after their death. 'An astoundingly intimate tale of domestic life lived in the crucible of power' – Observer

Retired MI6 agent Rodney Mundy goes on a dangerous mission to find a lost holy icon which, if discovered, could be the key to solving one of the bloodiest and most enigmatic episodes of history – the disappearance of the Romanovs and the fate of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last tsar Nicholas II. During his mission Rodney discovers not only the truth about Anastasia, but also that the Vatican was involved in the rescue operation of the Imperial Family in 1918. The truth about their survival has been suppressed from the public. www.thelostromanovicon.com. http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-lost-Romanov-Icon-and-the-Enigma-of-Anastasia/200394259973743

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.

Picture the scene: The White Army, loyal to the Tsar of Russia, is moving in on Ekaterinburg, where the Tsar and his family are being held under house arrest. The central Bolshevik Government in St. Petersburg does not know whether to execute the Imperial Family or to hold a show trial. It is trying very hard to pull a massive, tumultuous country together while most of it is being controlled in reality by fiercely independent regional Soviets. The Ekaterinburg Soviet discusses with the central Bolshevik Government what to do, but there is very little time because the White Army is poised to take Ekaterinburg. They decide to execute the Imperial Family but it all has to happen in extreme haste, so the chief executioner, Yakov Yurovsky, decides to shoot them by firing squad in the basement of the Ipatiev House in the very early morning of July 17, 1918. Seven members of the Imperial Family are to be shot - the Tsar and Tsarina, their four daughters and their son, the Tsarevich. Four retainers will also be killed alongside them. They are taken down into a basement and the firing squad lets rip. Immediately this small room is blanketed in smoke, blinding the firing squad with acrid gunpowder fumes. Bullets are ricocheting around. The victims who are still left standing are bayoneted against the back wall. The ones on the floor are assumed to be dead. All the bodies are carried out and laid in a cart for burial. But not all the bodies are dead - at least one is still alive, but unconscious, and is thrown out of the cart to make space for a soldier detailed to bury the bodies. The body was that of Grand Duchess Anastasia, fourth daughter of Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia. This story seems far-fetched, except that it is known for a fact that afterward soldiers frantically searched nearby houses, and that Yakov Yurovsky, by his own admission, had two bodies missing. He claimed to have cremated them, but that was physically impossible under the circumstances. For decades, Grand Duchess Anastasia watched as a total impostor - Anna Anderson - claimed to be her. She feared to announce her existence because Joseph Stalin was still in power in Russia, but by the early 1960s the political climate in Russia had changed and she could finally announce who she really was, passing a whole series of polygraph tests to prove it. Whatever else can be said about her account, her knowledge of every aspect of Russian imperial life is encyclopedic. It would be more astonishing if this story had been written by an impostor than by the woman she claimed to be. Nobody could have known so much about the Russian Imperial Family at the time the account was written - most of this information was not known publicly until the 1990s. She did indeed survive that early morning bloodbath in Ekaterinburg, and she survived to tell the tale.