July 17, 1918
Four young women walk down to the basement of the Yekaterinburg house that has been their home and prison for some time. The oldest of them is twenty-three, the youngest is only seventeen. Together with their parents and younger brother, they are all brutally murdered. Their only crime is that they are the daughters of every Tsar and Tsarina of Russia.

In this book, Helen Rappaport, the renowned biographer, presents the most authentic account of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatyana, Marija and Anastasia. Drawing from the girls' own letters and diaries, it paints a vivid picture of their lives in the final days of the Romanov dynasty. This is the first time, so to speak, that we can follow their life journey in the extremely privileged, yet highly closed world, from their mostly simple childhood years to their maturation into young women, while we get to know their first romantic loves, hopes and dreams, and finally the trauma caused by the revolution and its terrible consequences.
This engagingly readable, thoroughly researched and deeply moving book gives the girls a real voice and their story will still move readers almost a century after their deaths.