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A Novel
by Weina Dai Randel
From the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Night Angels comes the epic story of a brilliant young woman's dangerous rise to fame in the perilous world of jewelry in 1920s Shanghai―and the power of love and friendship.
Harbin, China, 1925. Fifteen-year-old Anyu Zhang discovers a priceless Fabergé egg in the snow and returns it to the owner, Isaac Mandelburg, a fugitive and former master jeweler for Russia's imperial palace. In gratitude, he leaves her his address in Shanghai and a promise of hospitality, forever altering her fate.
A dazzling world of jewelry shrouded in secrecy and greed awaits, when later Anyu arrives at Mandelburg's jewelry shop as an orphan. Single minded and relentless, Anyu will stop at nothing until she masters the craft of jewelry making. But she soon finds herself entangled in a treacherous underbelly of the city, where violent gangsters stalk the streets, vicious rivals seek to exploit her, and obsessive collectors conspire to destroy the people she loves.
From snow-crowned land to diamond-sparkling showrooms to a pristine island on the brink of war, The Master Jeweler chronicles an exciting journey of a bold prodigy artisan―including her losses and triumphs―in a glamorous yet perilous world of treasure.
"Weina Dai Randel carves out a glittering historical fable as dazzling and dangerous as the enchanted diamond at its heart....The Master Jeweler is a real gem!" ―Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Briar Club
"The Master Jeweler is Weina Dai Randel's best book yet. An unforgettable heroine, a relentless plot among the criminal rings of 1920s Shanghai, and prose that shines like a cut gem make this novel impossible to put down." ―Olivia Hawker, bestselling author of October in the Earth
This information about The Master Jeweler was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Weina Dai Randel is the acclaimed author of five historical novels, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Last Rose of Shanghai; Night Angels, long-listed for the Massachusetts Book Awards; and the Empress of Bright Moon duology. She is the winner of the RWA RITA Award, a National Jewish Book Awards finalist, and a two-time Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction nominee. Her novels have been translated into fifteen foreign languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, and Hebrew. Weina was born in China and now lives in Boston with her family. For more information visit www.weinarandel.com.
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