“[A] tale of power, perseverance and passion . . . a great story in the hands of a master storyteller.”—The Wall Street Journal

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating...

"The Imperial Wife follows the lives of two women, one in contemporary New York City and the other in eighteenth-century Russia. Tanya Kagan, a specialist in Russian art at a top New York auction house, is trying to entice Russia's wealthy oligarchs to bid on the biggest sale of her career, The Order of Saint Catherine, while making sense of the sudden and unexplained departure of her husband. As questions arise over the provenance of the Order and...

The Great returns in Season Two from Golden Globe and Academy Award nominee Tony McNamara (The Favourite). Catherine finally takes the Russian throne for her own- but if she thought coup-ing her husband was difficult, it's nothing compared to the realities of liberating a country that doesn't want to be. She'll battle her court, her team, even her own mother in a bid to bring the Enlightenment to Russia.

Charts Catherine the Great's tumultuous reign as the cunning and ambitious empress fights off threats to her crown, wages war with the Ottoman Empire and expands Russia's borders as far as the Black Sea and Crimea.

The Final Season revolves around more court machinations, complicated relationships, and coup attempts. Catherine is still in charge, meeting with peasants and nobles to get input on her quest to modernize Russia. She₂s working on bonding with Peter and their young son Paul. Meanwhile, the sidelined Peter tries his hand at "First Husband" duties like hunting and inventing new cuisines but soon finds himself bored with his lack of power.