When an anonymous note threatens someone they love, twins Sadie and Saskia Dopple are thrust into a series of crimes that look suspiciously like something from the pages of a mystery novel.

Akbar the Great Mogul, 1542-1605 is a biography of Akbar I (reigned, 1556-1605), the third and greatest of the Mughal emperors of India. The author, Vincent Arthur Smith, was an Irish-born historian and antiquary who served in the Indian Civil Service before turning to full-time research and scholarship. After assuming the throne while still a youth, Akbar succeeded in consolidating and enlarging the Mughal Empire. He instituted reforms of the tax structure, the organization and control of the military, and the religious establishment and its relationship to the state. He was also a patron of culture and the arts, and he had a keen interest in religion and the possible sources of religious knowledge. The book traces Akbar's ancestry and early years; his accession to the throne and his regency under Bayram Khan; his many conquests, including Bihar, the Afghan kingdom of Bengal, Malwa, Gujarat, Kashmir, Sind, parts of Orissa, and parts of the Deccan Plateau; and his annexation of other territories through diplomacy, including Baluchistan and Kandahar. The book devotes considerable attention to Akbar's religious beliefs and interests. On several occasions Akbar requested that the Portuguese authorities in Goa send priests to his court to teach him about Christianity, and the book recounts the stories of the three Jesuit missions organized in response to these requests. By origin a Sunni Muslim, Akbar also sought to learn from Shiʻite scholars, Sufi mystics, and Hindus, Jains, and Parsis. The last four chapters of the book are not chronological but deal with the Akbar's personal characteristics, civil and military institutions in the empire, the social and economic conditions of the people, and literature and art. The book contains a detailed chronology of the life and reign of Akbar and an annotated bibliography. Also included are maps and illustrations. Maps of India in 1561 and India in 1605 show the extent of Akbar's conquests, and sketch maps illustrate his main military campaigns.

From the internationally acclaimed and bestselling historians William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, arguably the most celebrated jewel in the world. On March 29, 1849, the ten-year-old leader of the Sikh kingdom of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the center of the British fort in Lahore, India. There, in a formal Act of Submission, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company swathes of the richest land in India and the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond, otherwise known as the Mountain of Light. To celebrate the acquisition, the British East India Company commissioned a history of the diamond woven together from the gossip of the Delhi Bazaars. From that moment forward, the Koh-i-Noor became the most famous and mythological diamond in history, with thousands of people coming to see it at the 1851 Great Exhibition and still more thousands repeating the largely fictitious account of its passage through history. Using original eyewitness accounts and chronicles never before translated into English, Dalrymple and Anand trace the true history of the diamond and disperse the myths and fantastic tales that have long surrounded this awe-inspiring jewel. The resulting history of south and central Asia tells a true tale of greed, conquest, murder, torture, colonialism, and appropriation that shaped a continent and the Koh-i-Noor itself.

In 1850, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond, gem of Eastern potentates, was transferred from the Punjab in India and, in an elaborate ceremony, placed into Queen Victoria’s outstretched hands. This act inaugurated what author Adrienne Munich recognizes in her engaging new book as the empire of diamonds. Diamonds were a symbol of political power—only for the very rich and influential. But, in a development that also reflected the British Empire’s prosperity, the idea of owning a diamond came to be marketed to the middle class. In all kinds of writings, diamonds began to take on an affordable romance. Considering many of the era’s most iconic voices—from Dickens and Tennyson to Kipling and Stevenson—as well as grand entertainments such as The Moonstone, King Solomon’s Mines, and the tales of Sherlock Holmes, Munich explores diamonds as fetishes that seem to contain a living spirit exerting powerful effects, and shows how they scintillated the literary and cultural imagination. Based on close textual attention and rare archival material, and drawing on ideas from material culture, fashion theory, economic criticism, and fetishism, Empire of Diamonds interprets the various meanings of diamonds, revealing a trajectory including Indian celebrity-named diamonds reserved for Asian princes, such as the Great Mogul and the Hope Diamond, their adoption by British royal and aristocratic families, and their discovery in South Africa, the mining of which devastated the area even as it opened the gem up to the middle classes. The story Munich tells eventually finds its way to America, as power and influence cross the Atlantic, bringing diamonds to a wide consumer culture.

Important American periodical dating back to 1850.

Annemarie Schimmel has written extensively on India, Islam and poetry. In this comprehensive study she presents an overview of the cultural, economic, militaristic and artistic attributes of the great Mughal Empire from 1526 to 1857.