The House of Two Sisters

Driscoll’s immersive debut follows a Victorian Egyptologist seeking to save her sister. Dr. Clement Attridge’s daughters, Clemmie and Rosetta Attridge, grew up so steeped in Egyptian lore that they took to calling each other Nephthys and Isis, after the sisters of the Egyptian god Osiris. Now, in 1887, Rosetta plans to marry, while Clemmie is an expert in hieroglyphics who works alongside her father. Clemmie and her father are unwrapping a strange double mummy when she discovers an inscription cursing anyone who disturbs the sisters bound within. Though not normally superstitious, she begs Clement unsuccessfully to heed the curse. By 1892, her parents are dead and Rosetta is sliding toward madness. When she grows convinced she is Isis, Clemmie attempts to break the curse by returning the relics to Egypt. One of the three English strangers who sail with her down the Nile on a hired boat knows more about Clemmie than he should, and she’s shocked when Rosetta’s fiancé suddenly boards the ship after a stop at a bazaar. Furthermore, her belief in the virtues of Egyptology is shaken once she encounters sites pillaged by European scholars. Driscoll interweaves meticulous evocations of 19th-century life with eloquent retellings of Egyptian myth. It’s a notable tale of sisterhood and survival. (June)