Allison Epstein

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Let the Dead Bury the Dead

An urgent, immersive alternate history set in an imperial Russia on the brink of disaster, following a surprising cast of characters seeking a better future as Saint Petersburg struggles in the wake of Napoleon’s failed invasion.

Saint Petersburg, 1812. Sasha, a captain in Russia’s imperial army, returns home in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat to his lover, Grand Duke Felix, the disgraced second son of the tsar. Their reunion is interrupted by the arrival of Sofia, a mysterious outsider Sasha suspects may possess strange powers. Felix, insisting that Sasha's old-fashioned superstitions belong in fairytales, takes Sofia into his confidence. On her incendiary advice, Felix confronts his father about the people’s suffering in the war’s aftermath, to disastrous results, setting him on a collision course with a vocal group of dissidents: the Koalitsiya.

Meanwhile, the Koalitsiya plot to gridlock Saint Petersburg with a citywide strike. One of their lieutenants, Marya, also falls under Sofia's spell and, allied with Felix, finds herself in the middle of a battle. As Sofia’s beguiling influence grows and rising tensions threaten the tsar’s peace, Sasha, Felix, and Marya must choose between their ideals and the people they love. Allison Epstein intercuts this exuberant alternate history with fractured retellings of Eastern European folk stories that are equal parts deadly dark and slyly illuminating. Vividly written and deeply immersive, Let the Dead Bury the Dead reminds us that the concerns of the past aren't quite as far behind us as we like to believe.