Zoya

The bewitching Countess Zoya Ossupov is brought up in the luxury of a St. Petersburg palace. The children of the Tsar, her cousins, are her constant playmates. But clouds are massing on the horizon, and as the Revolution overwhelms Russia, Zoya manages to escape to Paris with her grandmother.

There her talents as a dancer come to the fore and she joins Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, even dancing with the great Nijinsky. But the Great War still rages around them, and Zoya’s life remains far from secure. She is forced to move on again to her greatest challenge. Nothing so far in her life had prepared her for the tough struggle in New York.

Danielle Steel tells the story of Zoya in a colourful, exuberant narrative stretching across three generations, moving from the splendour of the Tsar’s Russia to the cut-and-thrust of the business world of New York, as Zoya must battle with terrible hardships and tragedies in order to attain what she is striving for. And in the end Zoya must come to terms with what she left behind in Russia so long ago.

The impulsive, charming and courageous Zoya is one of Danielle Steel’s most impressive characters, who will capture the imagination of all readers as they follow her fluctuating fortunes from St. Petersburg to present-day New York.