Stone 588
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
This "dazzling" New York Times bestseller about a flawed diamond with healing power that drives people to theft and murder is "an ingenious thriller" (Daily News, New York).
Phillip Springer has been grading diamonds since he was eight years old. His eyes are as sharp as any magnifying glass, and he has used them to turn the family diamond business into a global concern. Besides their love of diamonds, the Springers have another interest: the occult, ESP, and the mystical power of gems. Phillip has never fully believed in such superstition, but a sudden death in his family forces him to contemplate things he thought impossible.
Among Phillip's inheritance is Stone 588, a flawed diamond that the family was never able to sell but that his sister claims has the power to heal—and the power to save Phillip's dying son. But before the boy can be cured, the stone is stolen. To save his child, Phillip must recover the rock, and he will kill to get it back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
No ordinary thriller this (by the author of the bestselling 19 Purchase Street and 11 Harrowhouse, but a story as scintillating as the octahedron crystal on which it focuses. A puzzle to gemologists, too flawed to interest top diamond dealers, Stone 588 has, nevertheless, remarkable healing power, a fact only gradually understood by its owner, New York diamond dealer Springerand then others. Springer, who wants to use it on his sick son, refuses fabulous sums for the Stone. When it's stolen, he organizes a heist of almost military proportions in an attempt to retrieve it. The magic gem comes into the hand of a depraved, multimillionaire female socialite, and the swirl of murder and trickery in which it involves its possessors or would-be possessors culminates in a frightening chase across the roof of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The story provides an intriguing inside view of the world's diamond trade, and a tingle for the spine on every page, while Browne uses his fine-cut prose to reveal the connections between greed and sexuality with what seems like uncanny precision. 75,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; first serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild dual main selection.
