Eva Stachniak Books In Order

Publication Order of Catherine Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Eva Stachniak is a historical fiction author from Canada that is best known for the “Catherine” series of novels.

The author was born and brought up in Wroclaw, Poland where she spent much of her childhood. Later on, she got a scholarship at the Monteal-based McGill University at the Department of English.

In Canada, she lectured in Humanities and English and worked in radio broadcasting. She would later on go back to college at McGill University where she got her doctoral degree in English.

Eva made her debut with the publishing of the single-standing novel “Necessary Lies” in 2000. The work went on to become very popular as it won the 2000 Canada First Novel award.

She has since gone on to become an international bestselling author of historical fiction. Stachniak now has more than half a dozen novels to her name across several single-standing novels and the Catherine series.
Eva Stachniak currently makes her home in Toronto where she pens her bestselling novels.

Stachniak is not your usual historical fiction author as she was born and bred in a communist dictatorship in Poland.

She grew up at a time when the devastation of World War II was still very visible. Eva remembers how the women who brought her up used to keep small and big secrets that were guarded against the children for fear of political reprisals.
These secrets would fester and poison the women that kept them and as such, she has a very good idea of how trauma can destroy families.

She also knows how the enforcement of silence can reshape the memories of the past and how important it is to listen to forgotten voices and the important lessons they have to impart. It was from such acknowledgments that she started thinking of the characters in her most popular novel “The School of Mirrors.”

She particularly voices these lessons through the Deer Park girl Marie-Louise and Veronique the girl whose life is confined by history and on the other hand the midwife who gets empowered by it.

The work is a historical fiction work but also a story of women with a destiny of living their lives at times of great historical upheavals. They are women who fall in and out of love, get children and raise them, bury and remember their dead and keep and reveal secrets.

“The Winter Palace” by Eva Stachniak is a work told from the perspective of a Polish servant girl named Varvara. She is serving at the Russian court during the 18th century where lovers and spies are a dime a dozen even as brilliantly bedecked royals indulge in all manner of debauchery.

When we first meet Catherine the Great she is Princess Sophie a 14-year-old girl that had been brought to Empress Elizabeth by her mother as a potential bride to the future Peter III who is Elizabeth’s heir and nephew.
It is not long before Sophie realizes that she will need to please the empress even more than Peter or her mother if she is to realize her marital ambitions.

Elizabeth is advised by Bestuzhev the conniving chancellor to hire the services of Varvara the 16-year-old who is well-versed in storytelling, espionage, and languages. She is to make friends with Sophie and spy on her.
But soon after they become friends Varvara shifts her loyalties to Sophie and secretly continues communicating with her even when she leaves and marries a palace guard.

Meanwhile, Sophie graduates to the Grand Duchess Catherine who is increasingly despised by her petulant husband and just cannot win the trust of Elizabeth who is too demanding.

“Empress of the Night” is a great follow-up to Eva Stachniak’s novel The Winter Palace written in the manner of the novels from the likes of Alison Weir and Hilary Mantel.

The Romanov monarch Catherine the Great is reflecting on her meteoric rise to the Russian throne. She is the leader of the greatest power in the world and has sacrificed many lives which has made her one of the most feared women across the globe.
Catherine reflects on her life in her determined quest for power and love. She glories in having dragged her country into a glorious new century, even if she has left behind a river of blood and all manner of dead bodies.

By the time of her death, she will have accomplished a lot more than any other ruler man, or woman in history. She built the Romanov empire to new heights, controlled a conniving and unruly court, and amassed a vast fortune in land and art.

In a voice both intimate and indelible, she reflects on the decisions that brought her enemies to their knees and gained her the world. Before she dies in the shadow of the French Revolution, she comes up with a devious but very clever political maneuver that will ensure the greater glory of Russia.

“The School of Mirrors” by Eva Stachniak is an impressive story set in Paris and Versailles in the years just before the French Revolution and several after.

In 1755, Veronique Roux is a thirteen-year-old is given up by her widowed mother to a Man from the court of King Louis XVI. The man takes her to Deer Park where he intends to groom her so that she can provide sexual services to the king.

When she gives birth to a daughter named Marie-Louise by the king, the kid is taken away and she is sent to marry a wealthy merchant. The girl Marie-Louise is moved from different homes under the care of all manner of guardians in Paris and in Versailles.
She always wonders about her origins, even as she undergoes training as a midwife, gets married, and watches the end of the monarchy. Ultimately, she learns that she is of royal blood but by this time she does not care so much about it.

It is clear that Stachniak has done a lot of work on what happened on the streets of Paris and about the royal court to make for brilliant immersion into a tumultuous era of history in France.