The House of Two Sisters
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 10, 2025
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A young Victorian Egyptologist traverses the Nile River on a mission to undo a curse that may have befallen her family in this spellbinding novel.
“An intoxicating tale of adventure and obsession, told in prose that shimmers like the Nile . . . I loved it.”—Emilia Hart, author of Weyward
Essex, 1887. Clementine’s ability to read hieroglyphs makes her invaluable at her father's Egyptian relic parties, which have become the talk of the town. But at one such party, the words she interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. As her childhood games about Isis and Nephthys—sister goddesses who protect the dead—take on a devastating resonance in her life, and tragedy slowly consumes her loved ones, she wonders what she and her father may have unleashed.
Five years later, Clemmie arrives in Cairo desperate to save what remains of her family back home. There, she meets a motley crew of unwitting English travelers about to set sail down the Nile—including an adventurer with secrets of his own—and joins them on a mission to reach Denderah, a revered religious site, where she hopes to return the amulet and atone for her sins.
With each passing day, she is further engulfed in a life she’s yearned for all along. But as long-buried secrets and betrayals rise to the surface, Clemmie must reconcile the impossibility of living in the light while her past keeps her anchored to the darkness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
