A riv­et­ing, heart-stop­ping fam­i­ly mem­oir that blends art, obses­sion, and love as the author search­es for the spec­tac­u­lar jew­eled egg that con­sumed her father’s dreams — and spelled her family’s down­fall.

When she was eleven years old, Ser­e­na Kutchinsky’s life changed for­ev­er. Her father Paul, who owned the high-end jew­el­ry com­pa­ny the House of Kutchin­sky, set out to cre­ate the world’s largest jew­eled egg — one to rival Fabergé’s mas­ter­pieces. He suc­ceed­ed, but at a ruinous price.

The Argyle Library Egg was aston­ish­ing: two feet tall, made of sol­id gold, and drip­ping with pink dia­monds. But when Paul was unable to secure a buy­er, the House of Kutchin­sky col­lapsed, his mar­riage fell apart, and he sank into a spi­ral of drink and drugs. With­in ten years he was dead. As for the egg, it was seized by busi­ness part­ners and dis­ap­peared with­out a trace.

Over time, the mys­tery of the egg began to eat away at Ser­e­na. Why did her father risk every­thing for the pur­suit of this auda­cious dream? And where in the world was his extrav­a­gant, ill-fat­ed cre­ation, which had been lost for decades and was esti­mat­ed to now be worth more than £30 mil­lion. Des­per­ate for answers, she set out in search of the egg — and an elu­sive under­stand­ing of her late father. The jour­ney begins in the slums of London’s East End where her great-great-grand­par­ents arrived as Jew­ish immi­grants from Rus­sia — and ends in the most unex­pect­ed of places.

Echo­ing the inti­ma­cy of The Hare with Amber Eyes, Kutchinsky’s Egg is a spell­bind­ing his­tor­i­cal mys­tery that explores the glit­ter­ing yet shad­owy world of high-end jew­el­ry, the rise and fall of a fam­i­ly empire, and the com­plex bond between a father and daughter.