On the Red Staircase

The power struggle after Czar Alexis's death forces Russia to confront an impossible question: who will rule? The throne belongs by birthright to Ivan, the blind and deformed eldest son. But the boyars whisper of Peter, his younger half-brother, more capable, more vital, more fit to lead a nation peering into the abyss. What follows is a deftly rendered tale of court intrigue, where factions clash, alliances shift like smoke, and the fate of a sprawling empire hangs on a choice between bloodline and merit. Mary Imlay Taylor constructs her drama with sharp characterization and a historian's eye for the texture of seventeenth-century Moscow, the grand Red Staircase where judgments are rendered, the shadowy boyar mansions where poisons are debated, the icy winds of a nation in crisis. This is historical fiction that understands power is never clean, never simple, and never won without cost.