The love of stones - Tobias Hill

'I am following the traces of a great jewel. All its owners are dead, and the jewel is lost...' Precious stones are thousands of years old. They pass through the hands of owners and smugglers, merchants and thieves. Often the hands leave no trace, but they are there all the same: they leave impressions, invisible, like atoms of hydrogen drawn to the surface of a diamond. The Love of Stones charts three lives linked by one such jewel. Katherine Sterne searches the goldsmiths' quarters and hidden archives of contemporary London, Tokyo and Istanbul, following the trail of a long-lost jewel: a brooch of rubies, diamonds and pearls once worn by Queen Elizabeth I. Two hundred years earlier, a pair of Iraqi Jewish brothers travel to London, their fortunes made by an unearthed jar of mysterious and priceless stones. An epic story spanning two continents and six centuries, The Love of Stones follows three very different people, each in their own way consumed by the same desire. At the heart of their lives is the Three Brethren, the legendary jewel that binds them together in a narrative as clear and irresistible as the facets of a diamond.