Historical Diaries

Miss Fiona Hartley’s huge dowry should have ensured that finding a husband would be quick. True, she’s a tad older than the average debutante and spends too much time sketching brutally honest character portraits. She desperately needs a husband, so she can access her dowry, lest the man blackmailing her reveals a secret that would ruin her family. So desperate in fact, that she’s willing to do the unthinkable - propose marriage to the most surly, irritable gentleman in town.

During the night of July 16,1918, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children - Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei - along with four loyal servants were brutally murdered by Bolsheviks. For many years, there were rumors that the tsar’s youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, had survived that dreadful night and vanished. Anastasia did indeed disappear...but it was not the grand duchess.

The real love story of Frankenstein! Released from a promise to keep portions of her journey secret, Mary Shelley lays her soul bare in the intimacy of love, loss, and betrayal, the search for a mother's validation, and inspiration as a woman artist discovering her voice.