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THE LABORATORY ASSISTANT
In a city teeming with revolution, science and passion offer their own strains of violence.
June 2, 2026
Apprentice House Press
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PRAISE FOR THE LABORATORY ASSISTANT:
"Mix together a series of fascinating characters, measure out a beaker of espionage, heat up a scintillating romance, and you have a triumphant cure for bored readers everywhere. Like any great work of historical fiction, The Laboratory Assistant transports you back in time in ways that illuminate our tumultuous present. It's a fantastic debut from a talented writer. Can't wait to read Loya's next book!" - Dale Bridges, author of The Mean Reds
"The Laboratory Assistant is darkly romantic, a sweeping and immersive tale that follows sisters forced to deal with their family’s shocking downfall amidst the upheaval of early twentieth-century Russian life. As the young women deal with poverty, illness, and political unrest, they also risk finding more for themselves—searching, without even realizing it, for intellectual engagement and love. This is a beautiful novel that asks an essential question: what will you do for the people you love when the tides of history threaten to sweep them away?"
-Janice Obuchowski, author of The Woods
"Natalia Loya is a masterful novelist whose story is both beautiful and passionately lyrical. Here, she has woven a fearsome tale of the turmoil and upheaval that signaled the Russian Revolution. The Laboratory Assistant encompasses familial devotion, physical and mental anguish, madness, and lust in a world where survival is not a guarantee." - Rob Rickelman, author of Jumping to the End
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ABOUT THE LABORATORY ASSISTANT:
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.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
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