The Winter Palace is a work of fiction, inspired and sustained by a number of excellent biographies of Catherine the Great and her court. I am particularly indebted to Virginia Rounding’s Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power, Simon Dixon’s Catherine the Great, John T. Alexander’s Catherine the Great: Life and Legend, and Isabel de Madariaga’s Catherine the Great: A Short History. The Empress herself also wrote about her early life in her memoirs and letters, which I have often consulted, using her phrases and expressions across the novel.
Kate Miciak at Bantam Books and Nita Pronovost at Doubleday Canada have offered me their outstanding editorial guidance. Their enthusiasm and faith in the novel have been priceless, their advice and insights a lifeline. I cannot imagine better and more generous editors.
My agent, Helen Heller, has been an invaluable source of encouragement, inspiration, and wise counsel.
My trusted first readers—Shaena Lambert and Zbyszek Stachniak—have read the manuscript in its earliest stages with just the right balance of praise and meaningful objections.
Diane Paget-Dellio has made me see the cats at the Winter Palace.
I am grateful to them all.