mashka: the unlocked secrets of an imprisoned teenage royal  around midnight on july 16, 1918 the last tsar of russia and his family were slaughtered in a small basement in the ural region of russia. amid the upheaval of the days and weeks leading up to the massacre, the tsar’s middle child, nineteen-year-old maria, provides the most intriguing clues to the family’s shadowy and atrocious demise. <br>born into one of the wealthiest and most powerful families on the planet, maria’s arrival was a disappointment to her parents - and an entire nation. she was not the boy, and heir, that russia wanted and needed. when civil war breaks out in russia, her father is taken into custody, and the family is sent to a residential prison ruled by the vengeful ural soviet. inside the ipatiev house, the family struggles to adapt...and then to survive. <br>experience their mysterious final hours re-imagined through the eyes of maria, chronicling each shattering turn with devastating honesty as she comes of age - and finds unlikely love - during a brutal war for power. her human struggle to survive is painted in heart-rending color and adds warm flesh and blood to the imperishable legend that has encased the royal family of russia for over a century. <br>