Carnegie Medal winner Theresa Breslin returns with an extraordinary story of love, loss and friendship set during the chaos and turmoil of the Russian Revolution

Russia, 1916.

Nina Ivanovna’s world is in turmoil. Her only hope is to travel to St Petersburg, to escape the past and find a future.

Stefan Kolodin is a medical student young and idealistic, he wants change for Russia and its people. Amidst the chaos of a city in revolt, their lives collide. And a stormy relationship develops . . . full of passion and politics.

But soon Nina is drawn in to the glamorous, lavish lives of the Russian royal family where she begins to fall under the spell of their mysterious monk, Grigory Rasputin. The ruby-studded dagger he carries beautiful and deadly could save her and Stefan from a cursed life . . .

or condemn them to it.

‘An outstanding writer simply superb’ Independent