"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...

Trapped in a loveless political marriage to the dissolute nephew of the ailing Russian Empress Elizabeth, young German princess Sophia Fredericka bides her time, chooses her lovers carefully and plots her path to the throne. Skillfully manipulating the Russian triumvirate of church, army and aristocracy, she adroitly rides the shifting currents of social change and unrest to become one of Russia's most unforgettable and beloved rulers, Catherine the...

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.