Her evil stalker returns from the grave but in the end Allison and Bart are triumphant. May 19, Serene Heiner rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed this one. Even though these books are kind of like the show "24" where anything that could possibly go wrong, does.
And as great as the action is, I don't think I could ever recommend it to a guy. It's written from a girl's perspective and so the "romantic" parts would be way too mushy for a guy. Dec 31, Michele Nell rated it really liked it. Another one down in less than 24 hours from start to finish. I find myself constantly trying to find out who the "bad guy" is and not always am I right. A great page turner yet very much like the previous 2 books. Jul 16, Ann rated it really liked it. I really should have started from the beginning of the series, but this was available to me to read to I read it. It just seemed like there was a little too much going on and not enough story to support all of the action.
I still might finish out the series though, I will have to think about it. Once I got started on this series, I had to buy the next one that Lynn Gardner wrote, and so continued along the dangerous lives of Allison and Bart. The inclusion of religion, prayer, and faith added to the meaning of the book for me. I enjoyed the story and the twists and turns of the plot.
Apr 01, Liesl rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Those who like to read fun series books. Recommended to Liesl by: This was her first book. You can tell it is a first book as it is rough in places. The series gets better and better. I really enjoyed this series.
It was very fun, exciting, and romantic. The romance is between a Husband and Wife which makes it even more fun to read. Jul 29, Jordyn rated it it was amazing. Jan 15, Melissa rated it liked it Shelves: These are fun fast passed good reads. The only problem I had was that the series went on too long. Jul 07, Kalia rated it it was amazing. These books are really great.
I love this kind of novel. Ramance and action rolled very perfectly in one. Feb 08, Michael-Ann rated it liked it Shelves: Good romance, spy thriller. Dec 04, Julia rated it really liked it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In contrast to many other African countries it has long had a democratic, multi-party system, has enjoyed peace, and its human rights record is generally regarded as good.
However, according to Survival International, a worldwide organisation supporting tribal peoples, there is one significant blot on that record. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen. When Bantu cattle herders moved south about 1, years ago the area occupied by the Bushmen was gradually reduced and the arrival of Europeans moving north from the Cape about years ago led to the Bushmen being forced into arid areas that neither the whites nor the Bantu wanted.
Today their numbers total fewer than , about half of whom live in Botswana. In February Survival International accused the Botswanan government of cutting off all water supplies in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in order to drive the Gana and Gwi Bushmen off their ancestral homeland. The European Union offered to meet the cost of supplying water but its offer was ignored.
It has been suggested that the Botswanan authorities want to remove the Bushmen in order to exploit the reserve's diamond resources. In November the Mail on Sunday claimed that the supermodel Iman pulled out of a marketing campaign in which she was the "face" of De Beers. The newspaper said that company had specifically wanted an African woman for the campaign but Iman, who is the wife of the popstar David Bowie , decided not to do any further promotional work for them unless De Beers abandoned its plan to mine diamonds in the Bushmen's territory.
However other newspapers claimed that the reports were untrue and that Iman was not only unconvinced that diamonds are the reason for the resettlement but she also thought it has nothing to do with De Beers. The firm have strongly denied that they want the Bushmen moved and have threatened to sue campaigners for defamation.
In December , to the surprise of many, the Botswanan High Court upheld the right of the Bushmen to return to their land. However the government was considering an appeal against the decision. Botswana is not the only country where there have been disputes over the eviction of people from their ancestral lands. In October a South African court ruled that the Nama community in Richtersveld had a legitimate claim to the mineral rights at Alexander Bay on the north-west coast where there are lucrative diamond mines. Such disputes are not confined to Africa either.
There have been a number of deaths in clashes between Indians and prospectors. In Cape Town in October Nicky Oppenheimer addressed a group of students from Harvard and unashamedly described De Beers as "the world's longest running monopoly", adding that it deliberately set out "to manage the diamond market, to control supply, to manage prices and to act collusively with our partners in the rural parts of Africa.
Within a year of Oppenheimer's defiant speech De Beers completely reversed its policy. It would no longer be the buyer and seller of last resort but would rely on aggressive marketing to ensure that it was the industry's "preferred supplier. We could do away with the advertising department altogether" he said. The hoard of secret diamonds is vast, worth billions of dollars.
A fall in the value of diamonds would be catasatrophic. The event to which Oppenheimer was referring occurred on November when what would have been the biggest burglary in history was attempted in London. The gang had intended to escape in a speedboat on the Thames, causing the press to compare their plot with scenes from the James Bond film, the World Is Not Enough. It was, of course, also great publicity for the Dome which had notably failed to fulfil the hopes that Tony Blair and the Labour government had for it.
Despite that failure, diamond thefts became more common in the following years.
De Beers' change of strategy was the result of the position the firm found itself in at the start of the third millennium. Techniques of producing synthetic diamonds were also improving and if it became feasible to mass produce diamonds of gem stone quality then that would be a new threat to the stability of the cartel.
Much more importantly, the Central Selling Organisation was weakened in the s by a flood of illicit diamonds on to the market in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union, by doubts about the future of the agreement between De Beers and Russian producers, the defection of the owners of the Argyle diamond mine in Australia and even some African suppliers, and by new diamond discoveries in Canada.
The cartel had survived similar threats in the past but this time there were complicating factors. The hostility of US anti-trust authorities was nothing new but the European Union had also begun to adopt stricter anti-cartel policies and in April launched an enquiry into an agreement between De Beers and French luxury goods group LVMH. By July the situation had changed. Almost exactly a year later, in July the American anti-trust case was finally settled when De Beers agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing charges leaving it free, after payment of a fine, to return to the US market.
However, the most important threat to the future of the industry was the issue of conflict diamonds. Diamonds from Canada's Ekati mine were marketed as coming from a land as pure as the driven snow - in unspoken contrast to those coming from the war-torn jungles of Africa Cockburn, , p. If De Beers had been successful in inducing Canadian and other suppliers to join the cartel there would be a risk that the whole diamond industry would be tarred with the same brush - with disastrous consequences for the economy of several African countries.
By redirecting its efforts into marketing only diamonds which came from its own mines De Beers could avoid this danger and at the same time assuage the consciences of individual purchasers, as could developments in tracing the origins of diamonds. In July it was reported that Belgium scientists had developed a technique capable of identifying origins.
Production of synthetic diamonds has grown enormously since the first successful experiments by researchers at ASEA in Sweden in February and at General Electric in the United States in December Up until now synthetic diamonds been small and only useful for industrial purposes but in two firms - Gemesis a Florida-based firm using Russian technology, and Apollo, a firm based in Boston, claimed that they could produce diamonds of gem-stone quality. If they can produce them at a competitive price then De Beers' monopoly would obviously be seriously threatened.
Individuals buying jewelry are unlikely to regard the fact that the market for gemstones has been dominated by a cartel as scandalous. Industrial diamonds are a different matter. After all, nobody buying a diamond engagement ring would want to be regarded as a cheapskate.
Diamonds are appreciated precisely because they are expensive as shown by the song Diamonds are a girl's best friend , written by J. The belief that diamonds were the key to a woman's heart helped to cause the French Revolution. A woman calling herself the Comtesse de La Motte, who became Cardinal Rohan's mistress, convinced him that the queen wanted him to purchase secretly on her behalf a fabulous diamond necklace worth the enormous sum of 1,, livres, the price of a battleship that had been made by the jeweller Charles Bohmer for Madame du Barry who had been banished from the French court after the death of Louis XV.
Cardinal Rohan obtained the necklace from the jeweller and gave it to Mme La Motte, expecting to be repaid by Marie Antoinette. Instead Countess de La Motte gave the necklace to her husband who took the diamonds to London and sold them. When Charles Bohmer demanded payment the whole affair became public, including letters concerning the diamond that apparently came from the Queen but had actually been forged by Mme de La Motte.
The furious King and Queen had de La Motte and the cardinal put on trial. Cardinal Rohan protested his innocence and was acquitted but the countess was found guilty, flogged, branded and imprisoned. Later she escaped to London where she spread rumours about Marie Antoinette.
Diamonds and Danger [Lynn Gardner] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Ain't marriage grand? In only two weeks of matrimonial bliss. Diamonds and Danger - Kindle edition by Lynn Gardner. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like.
Although the Queen was innocent many of the public believed La Motte accused and thought that Marie Antoinette really had led Cardinal Rohan on and persuaded him to obtain the necklace. Consequently the affair of the necklace increased her unpopularity with damaging consequences for the short-lived future of the French monarchy. The affair of the diamond necklace inspired a novel by Alexandre Dumas, Le Collier de la reine or the Queen's Necklace , and Thomas Carlyle also wrote a book about it. Despite the fate of Marie Antoinette and the cynical sentiments of Diamonds are a girl's best friend , diamonds have become a symbol of eternal love.
The tradition of giving them as tokens of love dates back to when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy. However the typical diamond in an engagement ring is probably about 3 billion years old or two thirds of the age of the Earth itself, and was formed deep within the Earth and brought to the surface by a volcano over 70 million years ago. Diamonds are also formed in stars and are scattered into space by stellar explosions. Astronomers have claimed that most diamonds formed from primordial carbon initially present during the accretion of Earth.
Diamonds are abundant, in microscopic specks, in some meteorites, and it is quite possible that the stone in a ring was seeded by one such speck from outer space Hart, In June , G. Parthasarathy of the National Geophysical Research Institute in India, claimed that he and his colleagues had obtained evidence that black diamonds , known as carbonados and found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic, were part of extra-terrestrial objects that fell on the earth several million years ago.
Therefore it could be claimed that the old belief of the Romans that diamonds were splinters of stars that had fallen to Earth was not without a grain of truth. In February astronomers announced that they had found the largest known diamond in the universe. It is actually a white dwarf star about 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
Technically known as BPM but more popularly called Lucy after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds it has a kilometre-wide core of crystallised carbon, or diamond, with a mass of 2. The manner in which diamonds were formed and the values they symbolise are summed up concisely in what Advertising Age magazine called the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. Late one night in Frances Gerety, a young copywriter at the N. Ayer advertising agency, was working on a presentation for De Beers but, feeling tired and completely stumped she prayed, "please God, send me a line.
It contains extensive archives making it an excellent source of information on past events as well as current news, e. Al-Qaeda 'traded blood diamonds'. Carlyle, Thomas, The diamond necklace. First published in in 3 consecutive issues of Fraser's Magazine. An account by the great Victorian historian and essayist of the affair of Marie Antoinette and the diamond necklace.
A number of other historical accounts of the necklace affair have been written. See also the book by Frances Mossiker in this list and the novel by Alexandre Dumas. National Geographic , vol. A novel about the links between the banking system, the intelligence services, and the diamond industry, set mainly in London and Vietnam, but also involving Hong Kong and the Vancouver Stock Exchange.
First published in French as Le collier de la reine, in Epstein has generously made the full text of his well-written and fascinating book available on the web. However in the main chapter on World War II, chapter 9, which is very critical of British policy, he relies heavily on official US sources which he treats as gospel. He ignores the US government's rejection of the British request to stop supplying diamonds to Germany. Furthermore in chapter 16 he states that Rommel was sent to North Africa before the German invasion of the Low Countries and that therefore the Jews would have been in more danger from the Germans in British-controlled Palestine than in "neutral" Belgium!
That is utterly absurd. The Germans conquered Belgium in May , a month before fighting broke out between the British and the Italians in North Africa, and Rommel and the Germans did not take part in the conflict in the Western Desert until February Farrell-Roberts, Janine Blood stained diamonds: Very much a case for the prosecution. A novel about diamond smuggling written before Fleming's non-fictional work on the subject. The story of how the former head of MI5 set up a security service for De Beers and smashed an international smuggling network. Ernest Oppenheimer and the economic development of Southern Africa.
Oxford University Press, A biography of the man who more than anyone determined the shape of the diamond industry in the 20th century. The book is rather selective in its geographical coverage of diamond producing areas, having little on Russia and Australia, but does have a lot of information about the search for diamonds in Canada where important new discoveries have been made. Striking at the Root of Civil War. An article about a U. Cambridge University Press, The history of the quest to make synthetic diamonds. All in all, this is not your ordinary honeymoon.
And it isn't over yet. Allison and her secret-agent husband, Bart, just settling into their cozy honeymoon cottage, are suddenly sucked into another web of mystery, murder, and intrigue. This time it's in San Francisco, where a rash of fires, robberies, and vandalism has erupted, and diamond-studded bodies keep turning up in unexpected places. Rumor has it that all of this might have something to do with an upcoming exhibition of the world's most prestigious--and valuable--diamonds. What do you think? When Bart is called to investigate and Allison goes along for the ride, she gets more than she bargained for.
Still haunted by the slimy specter of an evil stalker she left for dead in Hawaii, she finds terror around every corner. As her life hangs in the balance, she learns to rely on a higher power for protection, and in a few quiet moments finds reassurance in the pages of the Book of Mormon--and in the arms of her new husband. Once again, Lynn Gardner has woven a masterpiece of suspense, intrigue, and romance.