The Winter Palace is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Eva Stachniak
Reading group guide copyright © 2012 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stachniak, Eva.
The Winter Palace: a novel of Catherine the Great / Eva Stachniak.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90804-6
1. Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 1729–1796—Fiction. 2. Russia—History—Catherine II, 1762–1796—Fiction. 3. Empresses—Russia—Fiction. 4. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 5. Intrigue—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.S728W56 2011
813′.6—dc22 2011004928
Jacket design: Marietta Anastassatos
Jacket images: Martin van Meytens, portrait of the Empress Maria Theresa (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library International); doors of the picture gallery of the Ekaterinsky Palace (Tsarskoye Selo, Pushkin, Russia/Bernard Cox/Bridgeman Art Library); double-headed eagle (Maslov Dmitry/Shutterstock)
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