From M.J. Rose, New York Times bestselling author of Tiffany Blues, “a lush, romantic historical mystery” (Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale), comes a gorgeously wrought novel of ambition and betrayal set in the Gilded Age.
New York, 1910: A city of extravagant balls in Fifth Avenue mansions and poor immigrants crammed into crumbling Lower East Side tenements. A city where the suffrage movement is growing stronger every day, but most women reporters are still delegated to the fashion and lifestyle pages. But Vera Garland is set on making her mark in a man’s world of serious journalism.
Shortly after the world-famous Hope Diamond is acquired for a record sum, Vera begins investigating rumors about schemes by its new owner, jeweler Pierre Cartier, to manipulate its value. Vera is determined to find the truth behind the notorious diamond and its legendary curses—even better when the expose puts her in the same orbit as a magazine publisher whose blackmailing schemes led to the death of her beloved father.
Appealing to a young Russian jeweler for help, Vera is unprepared when she begins falling in love with him…and even more unprepared when she gets caught up in his deceptions and finds herself at risk of losing all she has worked so hard to achieve.
Set against the backdrop of New York’s glitter and grit, of ruthless men and the atrocities they commit in the pursuit of power, this enthralling historical novel explores our very human needs for love, retribution—and to pursue one’s destiny, regardless of the cost.
Vera Garland is grieving the loss of her father. When she is clearing her father’s things, Vera finds some letters that reveal a family secret. While trying to get revenge, she befriends Jacob Asher, a jeweler, who has secrets of his own.
Born to a privileged life, Vera wants to work as a journalist and feels strongly about the suffragette movement and women getting the right to vote and getting paid the same as men. Vera has a troubled relationship with her mother, a society matron, who doesn’t understand her choice to work.
Vera was an intelligent, sometimes impulsive feminist who was ahead of her times within her circles. I liked her but didn’t always agree with her decisions. I would have liked to learn more of a fellow journalist, but I liked Asher and Vera’s lawyer cousin Stephen.
While I enjoyed the book, I feel it didn’t live up to her previous books. But I haven’t read a book by her that I didn’t like.
