Summer Reads: Best Jewelry Books To Add To Your Summer Reading List

Beach and pool days await and we are all looking for books to add to our summer reading lists! Here are our suggestions for the best books about jewelry to add to your to do list.

Summer reads: best jewelry books to add to your summer reading list

STONED by Aja Raden

view the 'Mary Jane' Charm by LadySage Jewelry 

"Stoned" is an approachable and entertaining web of stories that sheds light on epic jewellery lore while unravelling some of the most notorious and familiar legends. Author Aja Raden takes a classic yet playful American point of view, concentrating on value and worth over the artfulness of the jewelry itself. Raden beckons the reader, as if she’s whispering in someone’s ear at a cocktail party. She asks, “Did Marie Antoinette lose her head over a diamond necklace?” And “How did two sisters’ argument over a valuable pearl in England over almost 500 years ago help draw the map of the Middle East?” She even promises to reveal how a strand of pearls transformed Japan into a “global economic superpower”. Her aim is to strip away myths, and replace them with more complete impressions of the times and the people behind the stories. (GIA)

A MURDER IS FOREVER by Rob Bates

Rob Bates did not set out to write a cozy mystery, a subgenre of crime fiction in which an amateur detective, typically a woman, solves a murder in a small town. But in “A Murder Is Forever,” a novel published in October by Camel Press, he wrote just that — except the small town is NYC's famed Diamond District. "A Murder is Forever: The Diamond District Mystery Series” combines Bates’ industry expertise and diamond knowledge with a murder mystery storyline.The story follows Mimi Rosen, whose family is in the diamond business. When her diamond-dealer cousin Yosef is murdered, allegedly for a $4 million pink diamond, Rosen finds herself tangled in a conspiracy as she tries to get the bottom of who killed Yosef. We won't give anything away, expect for telling you that this is a MUST READ for anyone who loves sparkles and a good murder mystery! (The New York Times & JCK)

JEWELS THAT MADE HISTORY by Stellene Volandes

Not only a breathtaking table piece that should always be on display, this book is chalk-full of conversational history that keeps you flipping and reading through the pages. "Jewels That Made History" offers the reader a very concise, intimate, up-close and personal curation of historically distinctive lush stones, tiaras, pins, necklaces, and various other incarnations of fine jewelry that have long since been forgotten. Starting in the era of Cleopatra and continuing through to contemporary jewelry statements by Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, and Meghan Markle, Stellene Volandes tells the stories of how shiny stones and precious metals have determined empires, inspired expeditions and great crime, and been the communicator of status and ruin since ancient times. Illustrated with a mix of archival images and gorgeous photography of the jewels, this book is a beautiful, informative, and essential read for history lovers, fashion, celebrity, and pop-culture followers, as well as passionate jewel hounds. (Rizzoli)