Using her own fortune, she builds a fleet of warships. She brings the battle for freedom to the door of the Sultan’s palace, winning help from a highly unlikely ally to whom she makes a momentous promise. Lascarina passes into history with the name Bouboulina. In addition, she discovers that, for one young man with an independent mind, a troublesome reputation is no obstacle to friendship. The lessons Lascarina learns when she competes in a hard-fought sailing race will stand her in good stead all her life. Worse yet, Lascarina possesses skills considered highly improper for a girl she is a brilliant sailor and can read and write. Lascarina is the subject of much gossip no one in her small village knows who her father is, and Lascarina’s mother takes care to guard this secret even from her own daughter. The book opens in 1786, at a fateful moment in the life of the fifteen-year-old Lascarina Lazarou. It transports the reader to the seemingly quiet island of Spetses, then a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, where dreams of freedom still lived in the hearts of the Sultan’s Greek subjects.

Svetova has proven with this book to be a uniquely ambitious and imaginative writer. With a new novel recently completed that goes into an entirely different direction, titled Over the Hills of Green, she is certainly an author to watch.This historical novel about Lascarina Bouboulis and her role in the Greek War for Independence is inspired by the life of a woman who earned the title of ‘Admiral’ in the Greek navy. Print in the Snow is a momentous work, artful and beauteous from cover to cover, truly. In addition to Svetova’s enrapturing writing, the book also features breathtaking illustration by the talented Marina Botyleva, which adds another dimension of imagination to the tale and brings to life every page. A resonant and timeless story of a young girl’s self-discovery in a world of unique and memorable magic and monsters, the book really is hard to put down.

Svetova’s first published work, and it is a truly remarkable one. Winner of Gold medal for Juvenile Fiction E-Book in the 2012 Independent Publishers Book Awards, Print in the Snow is E.V.

When a chance encounter with another young skier leads fourteen-year-old Anna into another world – one of elves, sorcerers, monsters, and more – maybe New York isn’t so bad after all… She especially hates her new life, her new home, and her new stepfather, and if it weren’t for still being able to ski, Anna probably wouldn’t be able to handle it at all.

Print in the Snow by E.V. Svetova