Books by Jane Marlow

This third book in Jane Marlow’s Petrovo Series brims with pathos, poignancy, and humor.In the mid-1800s, naïve fifteen-year-old Anna finds herself pregnant out of wedlock and is banished from her tiny Russian village of Petrovo. The homeless, illiterate girl makes her way to Moscow, only to discover that the city’s frozen streets are filled with women as destitute and vulnerable as she is. Lacking other options, young Anna follows their example and accepts a yellow ticket—the government’s license to work as a prostitute. She takes up residence in a brothel, whose veneer of faded magenta silk, flaking gold leaf, and faux diamonds disguises the age-old perils of disease, unwanted pregnancy, and savage abuse that will mark her future.Anna eventually comes to grips with the realization that she must escape from her life as a prostitute before she either meets a premature death or becomes a used-up whore living in the city’s cockroach- and maggot-filled gutters. With an indomitable spirit and the help of three men (a grandpa intent upon bringing revolution to Russia, a young accountant who views life from a wheel chair, and a wealthy banker who rekindles her deeply buried dreams), she embarks on a most unusual path to a new life.

Lives pivot on small moments, but which way they pivot is up to the person. Jane Marlow's second book in her moving Petrovo Series is a powerful story of war told in intimate, human terms that will enthrall both male and female audiences. Andrey enters his final year of medical studies in 1854 with an empty belly, empty pockets, and secondhand clothes hanging together by wishful thinking. When Russia blunders into the misbegotten Crimean War, Tsar Nicholas recruits medical students to the front, and Andrey grabs at this flash of good luck. But his sanity is soon tested as he is forced to witness the most senseless and utter disregard for human life imaginable—where the death of a man holds no more significance than the death of a beetle. Andrey fears he is slowly becoming unhinged by the sound and feel of the relentless rasp of his saw against the mangled limbs of soldiers who have had no anesthesia. Eventually the guns stop firing, and the ink dries on the peace treaty, but the madness of war doesn’t end for Andrey. Can he begin to trust the woman who longs to walk beside him on his journey?