The Winter Palace

What price must be paid in the struggle for power, for wealth, for souls, in the fragmented new Russia?

Jeffrey Sinclair could scarcely believe his good fortune. Two years in London had won him success in the international antiques trade, a new understanding of faith, and the love of the beautiful Katya Nichols. But his world is suddenly shaken when Alexander Kantor, his enigmatic relative and employer, falls seriously ill. Jeffrey is left with enormous responsibilities for the exclusive antique shop and its mysterious clients.

A romantic honeymoon visit to Monte Carlo leads to a seemingly straightforward assignment. Jeffrey is asked to reclaim the winter palace of a Russian nobleman, whose family lost everything when fleeing the Revolution. But does Prince Markov merely seek to recover his estate, or is embroiled in a far more sinister plot?

Jeffrey is thrust into the turbulence of modern-day St. Petersburg. He is enchanted by the artistry and architecture of its czarist past, but discovers a dangerous collusion between former Communist Party members, KGB agents, and gangs of criminals and black conspiracy that values power above justice, wealth above human life. In an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, can even the church provide a safe haven?

Passing through Florian's Gate - having discovered The Amber Room - T. Davis Bunn now takes readers to the Winter Palace.

Exactly 175 years ago, on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, a failed uprising ignited a process that would, one red October, finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement-the century of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other unforgettable characters-and provides a riveting, sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present" (The Atlantic Monthly).

"Crankshaw is a superbly literate historian...His greatest forte is a sympathetic yet never mawkish insight into the psyche of the men on whom rested the burden of ruling the vast empire. His portrait of Nicholas I is a masterpiece."
-New York Times Book Review

You'll find vivid personal portraits all through the story -- the Tsars, of course, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III -- but also some figures struggling heroically against the ultimate failure: Gen. Totleben at the siege of Sevastopol in 1854; Gen. Loris-Melikov attempting to reform the doomed tsardom of Alexander II in 1880; prime ministers Witte and Stolypin in their time working against the clock to industrialize a sullen and balky nation. And the revolutionaries: the Decembrists; the young students-turned-assassin stalking Alexander II; intellectual rebels like Herzen and Chernyshevsky.

All this puts an 80-year perspective on the events leading to the 1905 revolution and the ultimate, completed downfall in 1917. His bibliographic comments on other sources -- including Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra -- are well worth reading as well: sharp, wide-ranging and with the same depth of perspective. Well worth reading in light of the present-day Russia's attempts to find its way.

The author masterfully blends history, political thought, biography, (and a dry sense of humor at times!) to a monumental task in examining the changes in Russia in the last 100 or so years prior to the Soviet era. (he covers some significant events in the reign of Alexander I) We see how Russia's expansion to Central Asia; the impact of the Crimean War; the economic modernizing problems resulting from serfdom; and the war with Japan in the early 20th Century shaped and influenced the thinking in the country.

Crankshaw is able to clearly deliniate the trends, and the significant events and people which made those trends possible. All in an easy to read and interesting style.

In November of 2001, fueled by the aftermath of 9/11 and the break-up of a relationship, writer Barbara Sjoholm left the United States to spend a polar winter in Lapland. Sjoholm was interested in exploring her childhood fantasy of Lapland based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, "The Snow Queen," and decided to research the budding phenomenon of winter tourism. The Palace of the Snow Queen is the result of Sjoholm’s travels in Lapland, starting with her visit to Kiruna, Sweden, to observe the construction of the Ice Hotel. Over the next three years, she spent each winter in the North, meeting ice artists and snow architects, reindeer herders, and Sami writers and activists.

Throughout The Palace of the Snow Queen, Sjoholm provides a deeply moving look at the people of Kiruna and the Sami’s struggle to maintain their grazing lands and migration routes in the face of tourism, while focusing on the various political and ideological changes occurring within this icy region. Ultimately, Sjoholm contemplates the tensions between contemporary tourism and traditional culture, and delivers a powerful travel narrative of this comparatively little-known region of Europe.

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