Historical Fiction Russian Novels & Stories

They then hunched over the chest while Ruslan magnifying the writing on the surface. "Well, yeah," said the boy after a while, "but I tell you it is not Russian." "I guess you're right. They do look like Russian at first glance though," Cassandra said. "Wow, now we have a secret language to decipher!" Ruslan gasped in excitement. "Yes, possibly," Cassandra added with a nod. "Or it could be Greek or Runic alphabets?" "Runic?" "It's a writing system from the Viking Age," Ruslan told her. "I remember reading about it. Back in medieval times, some of the Vikings settled in Russia. They called themselves the Rus. That's how we became known as Russians."

She reached up to trace the line from his brow down to his cheek. "That is a very long story," he said. "But if you want to hear it, I suggest we go to the Catherine Palace. I can show you." "The Catherine Palace? Not the Winter Palace?" "I have more of a personal history there than with the Winter Palace. My brother Grigori spent much time with the Romanovs in the early twentieth century. I was more involved with Russian royalty in the eighteenth. Much of court life was centered around the Catherine Palace then." She sat up on the bed as she looked around for her socks and boots. "So you spent time around the czars?"

“We got out alive. I can’t fucking believe it.” Dimitri grinned down at me, finally looking like himself as he did. He’d put on such a good show. Un-fucking-believably good. He’d slicked his hair back and worn one of the suits I’d picked out for him, a dark blue that brought out the little flecks of green in his gray eyes. Jerry, unbeknownst to me, had studied Russian literature as an undergrad, something he mentioned after I’d introduced my mate. Dimitri had pulled some weird details about the town Dostoevsky had used for the setting of The Brothers Karamazov out of his ass, going on for a couple of minutes about the history of Russian river barges, to Jerry’s obvious and enthusiastic delig