67 books like 11 Harrowhouse

Part of the value of diamonds comes from how avidly people steal them. The cat-burglar on the French Riviera. The miner swallowing a stone and trying to make it past the x-ray at the gate. Or the conquerors, snatching jewels from one turban after another as they ride through history. That last is the story of the Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light), told with his usual panache by William Dalrymple, the celebrated historian of Mughal India, in this non-fiction account. It falls to Dalrymple’s co-author, journalist Anita Anand, to track the jewel though it's last, decidedly inglorious change of ownership—stolen by the British from the Maharaja Duleep Singh, when imperial forces prevailed upon him not only to sign away the Punjab, but also to make a “gift” of his family’s famous diamond to Queen Victoria. Sure, the Maharaja did in fact sign the document. But he was 10 years old.

Ok, it’s an old thriller set in the pre-Internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-EU world of the 1960s. It’s a piece of twentieth-century clockwork, but it delivers suspense! The amoral protagonist can’t summon help by phone or Google his adversaries to gain an advantage. He must work to gain leniency from the Turkish authorities by acting as a double agent, delivering weapons to a gang of potential terrorists so that he might spy on them. The writing has a sharp precision and crisp wit.

This is another great diamond yarn where the movie by Alfred Hitchcock is better known than the book. A series of high-end robberies is plaguing the French Riviera. Police suspect that retired jewel thief John “The Cat” Robie may not be as retired as he claims. They come to arrest him. Robie escapes. To prove his innocence, he persuades an insurance broker to give him a list of the wealthiest diamond owners on the Cote d’Azur, so he can intercept and apprehend the new “Cat” committing the robberies, and thus clear his name. On the list is a wealthy American, with whose daughter, played by Grace Kelly, Robie develops a romance. The plot plays out in the ravishing landscape, but the real message is the diamond industry’s favorite—that owning diamonds makes you part of a glamorous world.

Marian Fowler’s lavish non-fiction account tracks the storied diamond from its origins in India, where it was bought by the great French jewel merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who sold it to Louis XIV. Weighing 110 carats in the rough, the blue was eventually cut into a heart-shaped jewel of 67.13 carats, known to history as the French Blue. In the turbulent early days of the French Revolution, all the crown jewels were moved from the Palace of Versailles to the Garde-Meuble, a treasure house in central Paris. On the night of September 11, 1792, thieves broke in and stole the jewels. Many were recovered, but the French Blue vanished forever. Too famous to be sold as it was, the London jeweler who eventually bought it, cut it down to 44.5 carats—the jewel sold to Henry Philip Hope in 1830. The Hope diamond passed through many hands, leaving behind a trail of… show more.

While I do love Miss Marple (if you don’t, I’m not sure we can be friends), I also love a good romp, which is exactly what this is. Our heroine Anne Beddingfield is in search of an adventure. Heading up to London, she finds herself investigating a murder involving mysterious clues, stolen diamonds, and the Secret Service. Her investigation quickly leads to a one-way passage on the Killmordan Castle, a liner heading for South Africa.

She soon finds herself mired deep in a complex intrigue but is bright, resourceful, and just foolhardy enough to be believable as a complete amateur who unravels it (with a touch of kidnapping along the way). 

Read this if you’re looking for a book where the author subverts expectations to deliver a punchy, action-packed adventure. 

Some have called this the first of the Victorian detective genre. It is a classic, timeless masterpiece that is full of mystery and intrigue.

A valuable diamond, the moonstone, is stolen, and the story involves a complex web of deception and suspense with twists and turns until the final chapter reveals all. Collins’s innovative writing style, told through different narrators, adds depth to the story and keeps the pages turning. 

It is a novel that still, today captures the imagination and drips with atmosphere. Also, I was honoured in one review to have my writing style compared favourably with Collins, so definitely a book to add to my list with the added benefit of having the period atmosphere and plot complexity that captivates me!

Acres of Diamonds is a timeless tale that has impacted generations of readers including me. It reminds us that before we begin searching throughout the world for the things we think we don’t have, we need to look inside of ourselves and explore what we really do have. As an African farmer leaves his home and everything he knows to begin a frantic search for diamonds, he discovers the eternal lesson that we get what we love when we learn to love what we have. 

The Season of the Runer series is a great book for fans of The Witcher. It is unique in that it doesn’t focus on western European culture, but rather eastern European or middle-eastern or Eastern. Runers are humans who have committed a crime and been genetically altered. They’re bounty hunters, essentially. It follows Tzarik, a Runer, as he struggles with the will to go on. He meets Sybal, a diamond mine heiress and brand new Runer, and trains her to help him take down a necromancer. I enjoyed everything about this story, and I’d recommend it to those wanting a darker fantasy.

One of the best SF novels I’ve read in the last 25 years.

The story takes you on a journey through multiple, shifting realities as different time travelers compete to change history to their advantage without wiping out everything and everyone they know and love.

Unlike so many books these days, this one never drags or bores with unnecessary background details but keeps moving from one catastrophic change to another. Highly recommended. 

This is cultural history with a difference and of a difference. It teaches you a lot about the reputation for fashionable culture that France enjoyed for centuries all over the world and continues to enjoy to this day. How much of all that is already packed into the book’s subtitle! The rest of the book is just as accessible and lively and unwilling ever to take itself too seriously.