The enormously wealthy Romanov family that ruled Russia for decades ended with the assassinations of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1917. The book "To Keep a Secret" begins with two Russian boys finding a box filled with expensive jewelry shortly after the assassinations. Many years later in Madison, Wisconsin, a young university student is working on two class projects when she meets a clerk in a used bookstore. Together, along with a secretary in the police department, they embark on a life-threatening adventure mixed with theft and murder. They learn how one person intends "To Keep a Secret,"