Cartier’s Hope

Ten months after her father’s death, retail heiress Vera Garland accidentally learns his secret and that the death of his lover, her uncle, was suicide to protect her father’s reputation when he’s outed by an unscrupulous newspaper owner. Vowing vengeance to make this monster pay for what he did to her family, she takes on an alter ego, investigative reporter Vee Swann. She pitches a story she knows this ruthless man will salivate over, involving the jeweler Mr. Cartier, his cursed Hope Diamond, and the marketing practices he’s using to sell it. Rose’s (Tiffany Blues) latest stand-alone is a Gilded Age gem highlighting social injustices and an ahead-of-her-time woman’s resolve to make a difference, set in the gritty and glittering splendor of early 20th-century New York. The Nelly Bly–esque, avant-garde Vera/Vee fights for the underdog in her incognito professional life and is a nonconformist in her society role. Rose’s elegant narrative and timely dialog express her characters’ humanity and inhumanities, while her research and attention to every detail occasionally make it difficult to separate facts from fiction.