The Laboratory Assistant

In a city teeming with revolution, science and passion offer their own strains of violence.

Petrograd, 1916 When her aristocratic family is left destitute, Mariya grows desperate to survive – and to support her widowed mother and sisters. She finds financial relief in a job with Dr. Nikolas Rodin, a reclusive scientist. While the work makes ends meet, Mariya is soon pulled into the eerie rhythm of the laboratory: a realm of orange gaslights, unsettling experiments, and a man whose genius is as seductive as it is unstable.

Tuberculosis and revolution both ravage Russia. The chants of protest ring in the streets and when consumption strikes her household, Mariya must choose between her family’s security and a love that shatters all moral paradigms. Meanwhile, in the surreal shadows of the laboratory, both reality and sanity begin to bend. And when survival demands scientific progress at any cost, devotion itself becomes deadly.

“Science, revolution, and passion intertwine in this atmospheric historical fiction.”

-BookLife (Publisher’s Weekly) Editor’s Pick

Author: Natalia Loya
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Apprentice House
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 392
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9781627206488
Language: English