Following the success of the series La Cartuja, Inma Aguilera returns with La hija del joyero (Ediciones B), a story that draws us into the world of jewelry, with the legend of the “cursed ring” of Alfonso XII as the backdrop. In this novel jewels are not mere adornments. They are memory, desire, power, promise, and threat. Each ring, brooch, pendant, or tiara preserves the imprint of the one who creates it, of the one who possesses it, and of the one who loses it. A jewel can seal a love, reveal a lie, buy a silence, or condemn a family.
Málaga, 1867. Ágata grows among stones and precious metals in her father’s workshop, Aurelio Guirado, one of Andalusia’s most admired jewelers. Since childhood she shows an extraordinary talent for distinguishing gems, imagining impossible designs, and turning matter into beauty. But her indomitable character and vocation clash with a society unwilling to recognize a woman as the heir to a craft traditionally reserved for men.
In the Guirado workshop, Ágata learns that a jewel is not just an adornment: it can be a promise, a wound, a test of love, or the silent testimony of a betrayal. She also discovers that people, like precious stones, have edges, facets, impurities, and secrets. While her father tries to shield her from the world and from her own dreams, the young woman grows convinced that someday she will become the best jeweler in Spain.
The appearance of Velasco Espíndola, a young apprentice marked by the disrepute of his family and by an ambition as powerful as it is dangerous, will forever alter the life of the workshop. Between rivalries, admiration, jealousy, and a complicity difficult to name, Ágata and Velasco will share in the learning of an art as delicate as it is relentless. But the discovery of a ring hidden in Aurelio’s secret drawer will open a breach in the Guirado workshop and trigger a series of tragic events that will change their destinies.
Madrid, 1878. Marked by the misfortune that shook the workshop and the mysterious theft of the ring, Ágata leaves Málaga and travels to the capital determined to recover the jewel and uncover who is behind its disappearance. In the workshop of the Mellerio brothers, former jewelers to the Royal Household, she will enter into a Madrid full of contrasts: aristocratic salons, bustling streets, jewelry workshops, appraisers, forgers, court intrigues and secrets that reach the highest echelons of the country.
There she will meet Arturo Bosco de Montesinos, Baron de Valdecarros and the Royal Household’s jewelry appraiser, a man as fascinating as he is difficult to decipher, who moves with the same ease among nobles, artisans and the underworld. Alongside him, Ágata will discover that the stolen ring may be linked to some of the deaths in the royal family and to a legend so powerful that many would prefer to keep it buried.
Inma Aguilera (Málaga, 1991) es doctora en Educación y Comunicación social. Se licenció en Periodismo por la Universidad de Málaga y cursó el máster de Radio de RTVE en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. De regreso a su ciudad natal se especializó en locución y doblaje, poniendo voz a documentales y audiolibros. Al mismo tiempo, inició un nuevo camino profesional como docente e investigadora en la Universidad de Málaga. Con The Lady of the Charterhouse inauguró una nueva etapa en su carrera literaria que le mereció el reconocimiento al mejor libro revelación en los premios Un año de libros 2024. Poco después, concluyó esta serie histórica con The Painter of Light.