Ablaze with the brilliance of fashionable life in pre-Revolutionary Russia, and with the smoldering currents of rebellion and conspiracy that culminated in the bloody Decembrist Uprising, this is a skillfully woven tale of imperiled love, treasonable intrigue, and obsessive revenge by the author of The House of Kuragin.

Sophie Weston, on a visit to her sister, Rilla, now the Countess Kuragina, sense almost immediately the artfully concealed but intense hostility in the Kuragin household. And when she falls madly in love with Prince Leonid Astrove, prodigal son of an old and powerful family, the dark passions of a violent past bid once again to destroy the Kuragins and Astrovs alike... Caught up in a perilous clash between family and desire, Sophie finds she must hazard life itself to unravel the mystery surrounding her lover's chilling secret.