In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land ... . Rosie's only inheritance from her reclusive mother is a notebook full of handwritten fairy tales.

But another story is lurking between the lines. Desperate for answers to questions that have tormented her for years, Rosie travels to Moscow and uncovers a devastating family history spanning the 1917 Revolution, Stalin's bloody purgesand beyond. At the heart of those answers stands a young noblewoman, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions reverberate across the century .