A Famous Diamond Binds Two Families across Four Decades in Newly Released Novel "Scarlet Is Grey"

AUSTRALIA, October 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Author Daryl Farry has published ‘Scarlet Is Grey’, a family saga set in postwar England in which a famous yellow diamond, a great deal of money and a wide gap between social classes draw two households into each other's lives.

𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲, 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗦𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀

The novel opens with a comparison that sets its tone. James Featherstone and Rebecca Heilbronn behave much like young people, yet the world sees them differently. He is viewed as a young man sowing his wild oats and she as fast and loose. Daryl puts the difference down to class and, in part, to sex, and he leaves it to the reader to decide how much of each is at work.

James is born in December 1946 into the Featherstone family, owners of a large tractor-manufacturing business in the south of England and a thirty-one-room Georgian mansion called Kingsbourne. His mother, Miriam, comes from a Jewish family of diamond merchants and department store owners. At the same time, Rebecca grows up on the other side of town, in a world that rarely crosses paths with theirs, except when it does. During the war, James's father, Henry, begins an affair with a secretary named Molly Heilbronn, who quickly realises the arrangement has a price. Her first payment arrives in a small velvet bag, and she has no idea what the stones are worth until she takes them to a diamond broker in London. The answer surprises her, and what she does next shapes the following forty years.

𝗔 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲

In December 1949, the Featherstones win the Mylore, a fictional 100-carat yellow diamond once owned by Indian royalty, at a Sotheby's auction in London. Daryl stages the sale in detail, with royalty, film stars and tycoons in the room and bids placed with careful timing. The family leaves with the stone, and the question of whether it is cursed begins to follow them home. Henry dismisses the idea as nonsense, but Miriam is less sure, particularly after she falls ill a week after wearing it.

The novel never insists that the curse is real. It lets events pile up and leaves the matter open. Along the way there are a jeweller's workshop, a robbery in which two men burst into a shop just before closing time and the scene turns ugly fast, and a secret held back from one character for most of her life. The story reaches forward to 1990, when Rebecca and James are still crossing paths and the old questions are still waiting for answers.

𝗔 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝗨𝗽

Daryl tells the story in a voice that is happy to comment, and now and then the narrator stops to ask the reader a question or point out the unfairness of a situation. That gives the book the feel of a family history retold over dinner. The story moves between grand houses and small cottages, so readers always know whose world they are in, and the wealth shows up in small details like fifteen servants and gifts from royalty for a baby of one.

The style is clear even though the cast is large and the timeline covers more than four decades. Some of the subject matter is frank, including affairs between employers and staff, so readers who prefer a quieter story may want to know that before starting.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁?

The book looks at how much damage a kept secret can do. Nearly every character in the story hides something, an affair or a payment or a fact about who someone really is, and at the time the silence usually looks like the sensible choice. Farry, however, raises a question that whether a secret kept out of love is really kinder than the truth.

Years on, the people who were left out are still paying for it, and the story keeps asking whether sparing someone the facts was ever a kindness. It also makes the characters hard to sort into good and bad.

Most of them have something to answer for, and most of them had their reasons.

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿:

Daryl Farry was born in 1946. He served as an infantry and combat medic during the Vietnam War and then spent thirty years as an ambulance officer in Queensland. After retirement, he and his wife, Felicity, established a mango farm near Bundaberg, and they later moved to Redland Bay and then to Adelaide to be closer to their son and grandson. His first book was a non-fiction war account. Felicity Farry edited the manuscript, and the cover was designed by their son, Joshua.

Bracken Joseph
Australian Book Publishers
+61 7 2116 0858