Master Craftsman

In 1917, Alma Pihl is a master craftsman at the House of Fabergé, and she is entrusted with guarding a Fabergé egg that almost no one knows exists. Peter Karl Fabergé made it in secret as a tribute that tried to balance his loyalty to the people of Russia with his loyalty to the Imperial Czar's family.

In 1921, Alma and her husband left Russia for Finland, her homeland. She took the secret with her and kept her past ties to the Romanov family hidden.

Three generations on, Nick Laine, a treasure hunter known across the world, is seriously ill and worries that the truth about the missing egg will disappear with him. Short on time, he asks his daughter Ava, from whom he has been estranged, to recover it. She has only a vague sense of the perils waiting for her.

As the pressure mounts, Ava must take a side, and the cost of that choice exceeds anything she expected. Kelli Stuart, whose work has won awards, sets this present-day quest against the lavish and dangerous backdrop of the Russian Revolution, where long-buried mysteries are waiting to be uncovered.