John Robinson at Portland Library

Brown Bag Lecture
with John B. Robinson
author of A Fistful of Diamonds
Portland Public Library, Portland Maine.
Wed., April 8, 2009 (12pm-1pm)
207-871-1700 ext. 758

"The Brown Bag Lecture Series features best-selling authors from Maine and New England as well as from across the nation and world. Bring your lunch and enjoy...Coffee, tea, and light refreshments will be provided. (During the renovation of the Main Library, Brown Bag Lectures will be held at Community Television Network, just a few blocks from the Main Library)"

John B. Robinson graduated from Harvard and headed straight to Africa to pursue writing. Along the way he worked as a guide on Mount Kilimanjaro; bought, sold and traded rare gems; and taught English in out-of-the-way places. He currently lives in Portland, Maine.

A Fistful of Diamonds - Book 2 of the Gemstone Thrillers: A suite of priceless diamonds surfaces in Central Africa. Fast-talking gem expert Lonny Cushman wants them. As cover, he chaperones a young seminarian to Rwanda in search of her missing father. Once there, Lonny chases the diamonds through the killing fields of the Congo. Survival depends on negotiating the bloody machinery that benefits from the conflict diamond trade--Islamic jihadis, corrupt army officers, Israeli diamantaires, and Ukrainian arms dealers. Can he save himself, the diamonds, and the seminarian from a terrible end?

Purchase the Gemstone Thrillers, by John B. Robinson, at McBooks.com

A Fistful of Diamonds called a “many-faceted page turner”

On January 11, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram ran an in-depth review of A Fistful of Diamonds, by John B. Robinson. The novel takes up where the first book of the series, The Sapphire Sea, left off, only this time Gem Expert Lonny Cushman chases blood diamonds in Rwanda. Reviewer Nancy Grape found the new novel unforgettable.

Several years ago, Portland writer John B. Robinson, armed with a Harvard education, a taste of life as a struggling artist in Paris and a thirst for experience, won a writing fellowship that took him to the sapphire fields of northern Madagascar. There, in the danger and unpredictability of mining and trading gems, the first novel in his Gemstone Thriller series was born.

"The Sapphire Sea" was warmly welcomed. Now the second novel in the taut series has arrived. And "A Fistful of Diamonds" has been worth the wait.

The year is 2000. Robinson's hero, New York gem dealer Lonny Cushman, has moved on to a new mission in Rwanda, a country where death broods, visible and threatening, over a horrific history of genocide and violence. Tensions roil throughout Central Africa. Danger threatens. Violence beckons or repels. And so do the storied diamonds of the area. (Read the full review.)

Purchase the Gemstone Thrillers, by John B. Robinson, at McBooks.com