The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

Candace Fleming's The Family Romanov traces the final generation of Russia's imperial dynasty, from Nicholas II's 1894 coronation to the family's execution by Bolshevik guards in July 1918. The book follows Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, their four daughters — Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia — and their hemophiliac son and heir, Alexei, whose illness the family kept hidden from the public and drew them toward the mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Fleming alternates between the isolated, opulent life of the imperial court and first-person accounts from Russian peasants, factory workers, and soldiers, documenting the inequality, famine, and military failures of World War I that fed growing unrest. The narrative covers the 1905 uprising, the rise of revolutionary movements, the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917, and the family's imprisonment and eventual execution during the Russian Revolution.

Published in 2014, the book is a work of young-adult narrative nonfiction built from primary-source documents and photographs. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction, and was named a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book.