In the frozen heart of old Russia, madness and magnificence walk hand in hand.
After visiting St. Petersburg in 1858, Alexandre Dumas brings back a dark legend from the Volga: the tale of Prince Groubenski, one of the last great Russian boyars. Through the memories of Jacques-the earless old huntsman who served three generations of princes-we enter a world of savage excess where rubles overflow from cellars, serfs die at drunken feasts, and a nobleman's whim can mean life or death.
Prince Alexis was just and generous, commanding merchants to cheat the rich but never the poor. He treated peasant and noble alike with unpredictable mercy. But he was also mad-loving and killing with equal pleasure, fearing only the Tsar and God. When his grandson Danilo inherits the castle in 1828, a body is discovered walled up within the fortress, and the mystery of Princess Varvara's disappearance decades earlier finally demands an answer.
Only Jacques knows the terrible truth of what happened in those blood-soaked halls. And now, at last, he will tell the story.
Dumas captures the brutal grandeur of Imperial Russia in this haunting Gothic tale of power, murder, and secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Some stories are written in stone and bone.
