The proposed book consists of two works - “The Tsar’s Court” and “The Wings of a Serf”, dedicated to the era of the Terrible Tsar. The main character of the story “The Tsar’s Court”, created by the famous writer of the end of the last century P. Petrov, the young nobleman Osorin, ends up in the royal guardsmen and finds himself in the thick of the bloody events of the conquest of Novgorod. Another work included in the book is “The Wings of a Serf,” written by the prose writer of the present century, K. Schildkret. At its center is the tragic fate of the peasant Nikita Vyvodkov, the inventor of the aircraft.