Rachel Louise Driscoll – The House of Two Sisters

Steve Thomas: Rachel, welcome to the podcast.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here.

Steve Thomas: Before we get into the book, of course, since this is generally a library show, I do have to ask about your former professional life as a librarian. What kind of librarian were you and what drew you to the profession in the first place?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, so I worked at a university library down in the south of England. I now live in the northeast of England, but at the time I was living in Plymouth. And I actually didn’t start working in libraries originally. I initially trained as a horse riding instructor of all things, a bit random. But then due to my asthma, I had to find a career change. And I moved on to retraining in business and admin at first. Then a position came up at the university library. It was just the sort of thing that I thought would really suit me perfectly, just being surrounded by books and having access to lots of resources for my writing, it really did seem the right move for me.

So I applied, I got the job, which was amazing, and this was actually a big leap for me at the time because I had been working full-time and then this was actually a part-time role. So I was deciding to take a pay cut. But that meant I could dedicate half my week to my writing. And then half my week I’m at the library surrounded by books and lots of great resources. So it was a really good balance for me and it really was such a good job for the season that I had it, it was very useful and I had access to so many fantastic resources, which did help me with writing the House of two Sisters.

I gave up that job when I got married last year and when I moved up north. So I’m now in a new great stage of my life where I am doing what I’ve always wanted to do with my writing, but I can look back on those library years and see how useful they were, which is great.

Steve Thomas: And I was thinking as you talked about your horseback riding instructor, did that experience help you when you were writing the scenes of the characters riding donkeys and things in Egypt?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. So I do like, where I can, to bring in that sort of riding element where possible into books because of my interest in equestrian stuff. So yeah. I really liked being able to write about the donkeys. That was also something that came up just in my general research that that’s the sort of transport they probably would’ve been using. That and camels. But I could bring in some of my equestrian knowledge there. That’s always fun to be able to bring in some personal knowledge and experience into your writing.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And did your background as a librarian help? You talked about having the resources around to be you, but did the job help shape the way that you do writing and research?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yes. So working at the library was definitely useful in that I had access, like I’ve said, to lots of different resources both physical and digital. And I remember when I was plotting the House of Two Sisters, I was shelving a trolley of books at one moment and I passed a section on mythology and I quickly picked up all the books on Egyptian mythology that looked interesting and useful and I popped them onto my account, took them home, and just like spent so much time when I got home just pouring over them.

And it was also great being able to use my library account to log into resources online. And that gave me access to ancient Egyptian texts that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. So definitely on the research side of things, working at the library at the time was extremely helpful. Obviously now that I don’t work there, I don’t have that to fall back on. So I have different ways of getting my research and stuff, which is absolutely fine. So I definitely saw it as a particularly useful thing for that season. So, yeah, that was really great.

Steve Thomas: So can you tell listeners what the basic premise of the House of Two Sisters is?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Absolutely, I’d love to. So the House of Two Sisters tells the story of Clemmie, who is a British Victorian Egyptologist who arrives in Egypt on a secret mission whilst being haunted by the myth of the goddess Nephthys. So it’s blending Victorian Gothic with Egyptian mythology. And it’s a macabre journey into the world of Egyptomania where snakes and crocodiles are the least of Clemmie’s worries. On her journey, she makes friends and enemies as she attempts to save herself and what’s left of her home. But she finds that keeping her secret safe proves as challenging as her quest as she encounters adventure, some romance and peril along the ruins of the Nile. So it’s got plenty of adventure, it’s got some mystery, crime, and thriller elements in there too, and lots of mythology and just a bit of everything really.

Steve Thomas: All that fun stuff.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Absolutely.

Steve Thomas: You talked about being surrounded by all this, but it sounds like you already had interest in Egyptology before that. Where did the initial idea of the story come from?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: It came from a couple of things really. So firstly I was inspired by a childhood experience where I got to hold a mummified Egyptian cat at a museum. And that experience just really stayed with me. I thought it was amazing. Just I really felt this connection to this moment in time from history. It just stayed with me over the years and really sparked my fascination for Egyptology.

And then fast forward to back when I’m working in the library again, this is during the pandemic, so it’s quite a quiet shift. There aren’t many students around. So I’m sort of twiddling my thumbs a bit at my desk and, I just decided to just sort of scroll through some articles, do a bit of research, and I came across this article that mentioned these Victorian mummy unwrapping parties. And I just knew at once that this macabre practice was going to be at the center of my book and the thoughts just spiraled from there. So yeah, those were the key things that really set me on the course of writing this novel.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, I had never heard of those. I mean, I knew about the obsession with Egypt and stuff, but I’d never heard of those unwrapping parties, and I’m sure it went just as you put in the books of just everybody in there being so delighted by everything…

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah. It was really interesting to research.

Steve Thomas: And at what point do you feel like Clementine kind of came into that, like how much did she kind of come fully formed into your head and how much did she evolve as you were writing?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Actually, she was pretty fully formed from the start of writing the book which was really lovely. I do spend a lot of time researching and plotting my novels. I like to make sure that I really am ready to sit down to write the book. So I don’t really start writing until I can hear the characters having conversations in my head, which is a bit weird, but yeah. When that happens, I know that I need to just get on and write the book.

So yeah with Clemmie. I mean, I’m a younger sister of two and I’m also naturally quieter outta the two of us. My sister’s the social butterfly, and I’m more the one who stays in and reads a book or writes a book. So there was some similarities there that helped inspire Clemmie right at the start. And of course, like me, Clemmie suffers with asthma, although thankfully mine’s not as bad as hers is. And she’s very loyal. But the similarities do stop there.

She’s a little more fiery and adventurous and daring than I would be. She’s also become quite superstitious because of all of what she’s been through. And she’s extremely clever. The fact that she can translate hieroglyphs and speaks several languages. So she was a really fun character to write. And it was really incredibly special to see how she just came to life from the first page. And she really does feel like a real person to me, especially because writing the book and the journey from writing to publication is quite a long time. So I feel like I’ve really become quite close to her over the past few years, if you know what I mean. Now I sound a bit mad, but yeah.

Steve Thomas: No, and it makes sense. And you had her have a similar introduction to Egyptology as you as well, of holding a mummified cat.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: I did. Well remembered. I thought I had to get that in there somewhere.

Steve Thomas: And the description of it, I guess we think about mummified people, and I’ve heard about mummified cats, especially given the divinity kind of given to cats and the ancient Egyptians. But I didn’t think about, you mentioned how small they end up being when you, when you tighten it around, like cats are not much, they’re just a bunch of ball of fur, so…

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It really was it was a special moment from ,my past that I wanted to bring forward into the book. And it’s nice when you can put in those little touches from personal experience.

Steve Thomas: Well, Egypt is obviously one of those big ancient cultures that everybody kind of has a touchstone to, Egypt, Rome, there’s several there, but Egypt has particularly been an obsession, and I know during Victorian England, it definitely was. And it hasn’t just been England that’s been obsessed, there’s been cultures around the world that have been, but during Victorian England, it especially was. Do you feel like there’s any reason in particular why that was such a big thing in Victorian England?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: I think there’s probably a couple of reasons that come to mind, and there’s probably more reasons than that, but I think the Victorians had a fascination for death, macabre things. And we can see that when we look at their own funerary practices from their elaborate funerals and the ways they acknowledge mourning to the memento moris they had made, you’ve got them posing with photographs with their dead relatives, the jewelry that they wore that was made with like hair woven from the deceased’s hair.

So I think there was probably a draw to this ancient civilization that had such precise practices for preserving their dead. I think that’s probably one factor ’cause we still find it fascinating now, to be honest. When you go to a museum, the Egyptian mummies area is usually the really busy one. At least that’s what I found when I visit the museum.

But on top of that I think this was a time when the memories of the Napoleonic Wars was still fresh in everyone’s minds. The French took the Rosetta Stone and then it got handed over to the British, and I think the race to translate hieroglyphs wasn’t just a race for knowledge, I think it was a political competition. So these things are extremely topical and I think that’s what really drew Victorian England to become more and more interested in Egyptology.

Steve Thomas: Cultural appropriation is not a phrase that they would’ve used in the 19th century, and not even anything necessarily most people would’ve cared about, even if they had known about the concept, but I do feel like that’s explored a little bit through Clementine’s story of wanting to, we don’t wanna spoil anything but what she’s bringing back to Egypt of this mission that she has. Can you talk about how you explore that concept a little bit?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to consider the preservation of history. So greed and ignorance from both tourists and locals meant that smuggling and illegal excavations was becoming a real big problem. Artifacts were getting ruined and provenance was being lost, so that was something I really wanted to think about in the book.

And then on top of that, I wanted to explore the morality of digging up human remains, which feels very drastically different from digging up a mummified cat. It’s something that Clemmie comes to really consider on her journey as she starts out the daughter of a mummy unwrapper, and then she arrives in Egypt and sees for herself the issues with these practices.

So over the course of the book, she learns lot about the importance of protecting history, what’s right to do and what’s wrong to do. And perhaps there’s still questions raised and she doesn’t know all the answers. But it’s definitely something that can perhaps make us all think.

Steve Thomas: It’s fairly early in the book, so I think it’s okay to say, during the unwrapping that her father also decides, or through goading by the audience, to also dissect the body in there as well, which is a level that he hadn’t gone to before. And again, that’s that respect for the human body thing that is some of the element that set sets off Clementine on this journey.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, precisely, and that was the sort of thing that was going on. I was inspired by a real mummy unwrapper that’s mentioned in the book, “Mummy” Pettigrew, and he did exactly just that, he would cut them apart. So, yeah. It’s quite an alarming thing when I first read about it, but I thought, I’ve got to bring that out in a book.

Steve Thomas: Have you ever had the chance to travel to Egypt yourself?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Oh, I wish. Sadly not. And actually there was a moment when I was writing the book, when I asked myself if I could even be writing that book because I hadn’t been. But then I realized I was writing about the 19th century and I’ve not experienced that either. So I thought, so long as I do my research properly hopefully it’ll be okay. And actually the amount of people who have traveled to Egypt and who have then told me, “Oh, I thought you had traveled ’cause it was exactly like what I’ve seen.” So that was just really nice to hear.

So to conduct my research for it, I did a lot because I knew that I would really lack the confidence otherwise to know whether I was bringing Egypt across properly. I spent a lot of time examining maps and I love that there’s a map at the front of the book for people as well to follow along with Clemmie’s journey. I loved reading A Thousand Miles Up The Nile, which was written by Amelia Edwards who was this incredible woman from the 19th century. She did a lot of traveling and she wrote this travel log about Egypt. But she was extremely clever and she even like learned how to translate some hieroglyphs and stuff and everything as well. So she was very inspirational and probably inspired me slightly when I was coming up with Clemmie. But that was incredibly helpful when I was trying to see what Egypt was like at the time, because 19th century Egypt is going to be different from 21st century Egypt. So that really helped me to understand that.

And then I also studied the ancient Egyptian artwork. I was looking at lithographs and engravings from 19th century travelers so that I could see Egypt from their perspective. I was reading a lot about the myths through the writings of Plutarch and ancient Egyptian texts through JSTOR.

And I also tried to spend quite a lot of time getting my head around hieroglyphs, not that I can read them. I wish I could, I could only pick out one or two here or there. But mainly using resources that Clemmie would’ve used. So that’s just like a brief glimpse into how I tried to do my research for Egypt and for the big subject matter of Egyptology in the book.

Steve Thomas: You’ve mentioned Nephthys and Isis. They’re definitely very powerful, and there’s a kite theme that goes through there as well of the two kites generally. But what drew you to these two goddesses to have them anchor her journey?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. So like you say, Isis and Nephthys could transform into kites, and that was a really fun element to be able to bring in, that haunting feeling to the book. Each time you spot the kite in the sky or Clemmie spots the kite in the sky. But I knew that I wanted to blend Victoriana with mythology, so it was just a question of which myths. So when I was pouring over those books from the library, I was considering so many different gods and goddesses and the myth of Isis and Nephthys just stood out to me.

I knew that I wanted to write about sisterhood, so it just worked. The fact that yes, they were two sisters, but also there’s so much more to their complex story because of their brothers who are also their husbands. It’s a bit complicated. But I just thought, yeah, this will just work. And the elements in the story where they mirror each other, so the Victorian timeline and the mythological timeline, they just fitted together very naturally. I didn’t actually have to overthink it, which was really nice. It was actually very rewarding seeing the storyline just come together first in the plotting and then in the writing. It just seemed to work naturally. So that was really special.

Steve Thomas: As you said, sisterhood is a big theme of it, and so they’re obviously good goddesses to add in for that. But then there’s also Clemmie’s sister and there’s even sisterhood with some other female characters that she meets throughout the story. Was that an important part of the book that you wanted to make sure you added in there?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, so as a sister, I really wanted to explore the subject to sisterhood. I grew up extremely close to my sister, and then I was writing this book in the wake of the fact that she’d just got married and moved away. And I kind of felt a bit left behind. I was still single at the time, and my sister and I had done everything together and suddenly we weren’t doing everything together, which was as it should be, but I did feel a bit neglected. And so I just thought, this is such a special bond and I could really explore this in a novel. And I thought a lot of people would understand it because a lot of people either have a sibling, or they have a friendship that would be like that. So I think a lot of us know how that might feel. I thought it was something that a lot of us could understand.

In The House of Two Sisters, Clemmie is also extremely close to her sister, but due to tragic circumstances, something has come between them, which I won’t spoil by saying. And then in the myth, Isis and Nephthys are close, but when Nephthys betrays her sister, it results in their brother being murdered. Like I said, the myth is really quite complicated, but I really enjoyed weaving the two individual stories together. So both sister pairs are unique, but there are crossovers there as well in the themes of love loss, betrayal, and protection. Yeah, I just wanted to really draw on that bond.

Steve Thomas: She also has a very complex relationship with her father, as many people do with their fathers ’cause she loves him and wants to work with him, but especially in that one moment that we keep flashing back to, that’s almost a split in their relationship too, of where he’s open and progressive for the times, but she may be stepped a little too far ahead of where he thinks a woman should be getting involved.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. And I think gradually and again, I don’t wanna say too much and spoil the story, but as we read on and see more and more, we gradually understand perhaps what is coming between them in their relationship. And where they really were like partners, but gradually, things change for her, which is a shock to poor Clemmie’s system I think.

Steve Thomas: In the section at the end where you’re talking about how you wrote the book, you mentioned a little story. You started the book, you were single, you got married throughout the thing. You’ve taken your husband’s name, but Driscoll is not your husband’s name. Can you tell that little story that involves your grandfather, about why you decided to do that?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. So when I got my book deal, I was still single and I hadn’t even met my future husband yet, so that kind of shows what a whirlwind romance we’ve had.

Steve Thomas: And how long the publishing process is!

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Precisely, yeah, definitely. And then my granddad on my dad’s side, so my Driscoll side, he was very sadly passing away, and I visited him a couple of days before he passed away. He was very weak and he wasn’t taking everything in, but I did tell him, and again, I hadn’t quite got the book deal at this stage, but I was about to go on submission to publishers. I had high hopes and I just wanted him to know. So I told him that the name Driscoll was going to be in print, and he managed to smile, and it was just such a special moment that I truly believe he took that in and he heard what I said.

So yes. I then got married before the book came out, so I have a different surname now. But the book is still published under Driscoll. Just as I told my granddad, the name Driscoll is in print, so yeah, that was very special.

Steve Thomas: Very good remembrance of him that you can have in there and always have that there on your bookshelf.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Absolutely. Thank you.

Steve Thomas: You did mention earlier that you do lots of plotting in advance. Do you actively outline when you’re writing, and the process now, you get to be sort of a full-time writer, do you have certain times of day? Like what is your process generally?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, absolutely. I am very much a plotter, so that does mean Excel spreadsheets. I have a chapter by chapter plan, but that is fluid, so that is going to alter a little bit as I go so sometimes I might suddenly be partway through and I think, actually this is going to be better and I’ll just make some tweaks. But I like to have that plan so that I can come to it each day and I see what I’ve got to do next, so that I know I have a definite ending. That way, I’ve got a goal to work towards. And then I’ll have a timeline document. I’ll have character profiles. I’ve got a notebook where I’m jotting down different ideas as I go. So yeah, I’ve got quite a few different things that help me out beforehand.

When I wrote the House of Two Sisters, of course I was working part-time at the library. I was also battling post viral fatigue at the time. So it was a bit of a juggling act with work and needing to rest and writing that first draft. And then thankfully I got over that when it came around to the editing and everything and submitting to agents. That was kind of my pattern then, but that’s obviously changed now, now that I’m not working at the library, so I’m at home all the time now, which is great.

So if I started the day writing, I probably would get carried away and not get anything else done. So I have to discipline myself and make sure that I get other jobs done. So I actually start my day with bits of housework that I need to do, I’ll probably get some dinner on in the slow cooker so it can be cooking away whilst I write, maybe make a loaf of bread, you know, that sort of thing. And then I can fire up my laptop and sit down and write until my husband gets home from work. So that’s pretty much my structure. Some days can look a little bit different, but on the whole, that’s how I tend to look at how my structure will work.

Steve Thomas: Eat your vegetables before you get your dessert.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Absolutely. But I do enjoy my housework, I’ll just add.

Steve Thomas: I like doing that stuff ’cause then I can go around the house listening to podcasts and music and all kind of stuff.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s great.

Steve Thomas: Or an audio book or whatever. And are you gonna have an audio book for your book? Do you know? Is there one?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: There is an audio book. I have the most incredible narrator for the audiobook. So Antonia Salib who was in some different things. She’s an actress, but she was in Marvel’s Moon Knight and she played one of the Egyptian goddesses in that. So I was absolutely thrilled when she agreed to narrate the book. She does the most incredible job.

Steve Thomas: Great. And since this is your first book that you’re getting published, I’m sure you’ve probably written others as most writers do. What has surprised you most about the publishing process of now getting all the way through it into a physical book in your hand?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: That’s such a good question, also slightly difficult because it’s definitely been a learning journey, but I don’t think there’s been any huge surprises along the way, but maybe one thing would be when I first realized how long a lead I would have up until publication. Here in the UK I got my deal back in 2023. And then the book didn’t come out till this year, so I had two years to focus on edits, marketing and publicity. The long lead was extremely useful in being able to just spread the word about the book, but when I was given my publication date I think I was possibly a little surprised at the time. Oh wow. That’s two years away, you know? So that was probably the biggest surprise I can think of. But also I’m just so grateful for how lovely it’s been working with my different editors, UK and US and just how open they are to any requests such as the map and things like that. So it’s just been really lovely, a great experience.

Steve Thomas: Were there any big changes you had to make for the US edition? I mean, I’m sure they go through and change all the British spellings to the American spellings and things like that, but anything that you really had to work on to get changed?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: No, there’s nothing drastic. Like you say, there will be an odd word here or there, possibly a sentence. But yeah, there’s nothing really, really big. At one point we considered changing the chapter titles and just having numbers, but we decided to stick with the chapter titles which is what we’ve got in the UK. So yeah, there are some tweaks here and there, but ultimately it’s the same.

Steve Thomas: Just a lot of U’s dropping out of words like “colour”.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Precisely, precisely.

Steve Thomas: And what were some of the earliest books that you remember falling in love with? Were there any that made you particularly fall in love with reading or that made you want to be a writer? Like, “I can do this!”

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah. So where do I begin? My mom would read classics to me from a young age, like, she read my first Charles Dickens to me when I was three.

Steve Thomas: Which one was that?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: That was Oliver Twist. And I remember her reading Little Women to me, and I remember falling in love with the Wind in the Willows when I was reading to myself, you know, things like that. So I actually can’t remember a moment where I haven’t thought, ” One day I’ll be a writer.” Like I’ve always thought I would write one day like even before I could write stories down myself. I would dictate them to my mom and she would write them down for me. So my head’s always been buzzing with ideas.

But a book that’s inspired me, I would say rather than inspired me to write, because I think all stories have over the years a book that’s perhaps inspired me for to write historical fiction. When I was in my mid-teens, I was really inspired by Gone with the Wind because I just think it beautifully blends fact and fiction. It just does it so well. So that probably helps cement my love for historical fiction. But then oh, I could name so many. I think Jane Eyre, My Cousin Rachel for gothic fiction. You know, I could keep going. But yeah, a lot of love for classics, but also had so much fun discovering lots of different contemporary authors as well over the years.

Steve Thomas: So, you’ve got this book coming out, but the thing that readers always want you, you read this book, what’s next? What’s the next book gonna be from you? Do you have ideas of what you wanna do next?

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yeah, in fact, I’m currently editing book to getting it ready to send to my UK editor. I do have a complete draft and I’m just making some final tweaks and just reading through. It’s that moment where you’re like, oh, I’ll read it through one more time before I click send. But yeah, I’m very excited about it. I’m at that stage where it’s really hard to not say too much ’cause I just want to announce it. But like the House of Two Sisters, it blends Victorian Gothic with some different elements of myth or legend, I won’t say which. So book two isn’t set in Egypt and it’s not following Egyptology as I did want to explore something different this time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I returned to Egypt one day because I loved writing about Egypt. And it’s been wonderful to hear already how many readers have loved journeying to Egypt with Clemmie. So yeah, one day I might return to Egypt, but for book two it is going to be something a bit different.

Steve Thomas: Great. And maybe we’ll see Clemmie again someday.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Maybe. That would be fun.

Steve Thomas: Who knows what else she can get into!

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Yes.

Steve Thomas: Well, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about the House of Two Sisters. It is a wonderful mix of all that mythology and history and you really get the emotional depth of her story ’cause she’s really complex in ways that we can’t talk about too much ’cause you don’t wanna give away too much of the story, but if you haven’t picked it up yet you can pick it up at your local bookstore or check it out from your local library. And Rachel, thank you again for coming on.

Rachel Louise Driscoll: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It’s been great.

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Rebecca Vnuk: Hello and welcome back to the Circ Desk! I’m Rebecca Vnuk, the Executive Director of Library Reads.

April Mazza: And I am April Mazza. I work at NoveList. I mainly do product trainings and continuing education through Learn with NoveList.

Rebecca Vnuk: And today we are talking about the House of Two Sisters by Rachel Louise Driscoll. As you just heard from Steve’s interview, we’ve got a young Victorian Egyptologist traveling along the Nile, there’s a curse that might be on her family, all kinds of good time stuff. We have lots of historical fiction on the Library Reads list, but I was stumped on the Egyptology part of it, and then I thought, “That’s okay.. We don’t always have to go plot for plot line when it comes to read alikes. So I thought, I can at least find things that are set in the Victorian era. We can find the same feel of the book, which is this, we’ve got family curse. We’ve got a smart young woman who is trying to go on an adventure, figure things out, uncover secrets, et cetera.

So the books that I picked to match up with this, the first one is the London Seance Society by Sarah Penner, and that came out in March of 2023, so that’s the list that you’ll find that on, and the annotation for that is, “Lenna Wickes came to Paris in 1873 to apprentice for Vaudeline D’Allair, the renowned spiritualist.  Vaudeline is called back to the London Seance Society, and Lenna joins her to find out who murdered her sister, Evie. Can they figure out what happened before they wind up dead too? Penner has clearly researched the spiritualism movement of the Victorian era to spin a suspenseful tale.” And that comes from Shari Suarez in Genesee, Michigan. I thought that that would be a good matchup because you’ve got this young woman, she’s on this quest to find out what happened to one of her family members. We’ve got the right Victorian era. Spiritualism and Egyptology are not really the same, but I thought they fell enough in the woo woo category that that would be appealing. So I’m like, “Okay, we’re gonna go with that.”

And then my second recommendation is actually not for a particular book. It is for a series, and this is the Veronica Speedwell series from our Hall of Fame author, Deanna Raybourn. This is a Victorian mystery series that is about a natural historian who is a butterfly hunter, and she is a world traveler. I believe at this point there are 10 books… nine books. There are nine books in the series with a 10th coming out next year in 2026. So I thought these would also be a good matchup because we’ve got that same sort of setting. There is some romance. It’s kind of a mystery / romance series, but I thought that the Veronica Speedwell character was a good match for the equivalent character of Clementine in the House of Two Sisters, so I thought if you really liked that character, you would go for that.

And then I also wanted to just make a pitch for Library Reads Hall of Fame authors. When an author hits our list three times, they then get moved onto our Hall of Fame, which is a special section of our website. We actually have just completed a project giving each one of those authors, I believe we have 186 authors right now in our Hall of Fame, and each of them has a printable flyer with all of the books that appeared on the Library Reads list, so you can find that on our website, which is libraryreads.org. And I just wanted to give a little commercial for that before handing it over to April for her picks.

April Mazza: Oh, I love that. I love the Hall of Fame, but I love that they now have this cool flyer to promote their work.

So a few years ago I was really fortunate enough to visit friends living in Cairo, so I am really excited about the House of Two Sisters. Before my trip, I read some sort of Egypt related books, so I thought I’d talk about a couple of those that I think would make good read alikes, but like you mentioned, Rebecca, these aren’t like plot for plot. These are a little bit out there. But I immediately saw the appeal.

So the first one is A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark, and this story is really a wild trip. I think if you’ve ever read any of his books, you would know that. This one is sort of like a noir detective story, but it also has supernatural and steampunk elements. It takes place in 1912 in Cairo, but in an alternate history where there are djinn, there are ghouls and angels and they all sort of exist together with just regular people. The main character is a special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. Just glad that’s not my job title. And along with her partner, she’s solving these sort of magical murders but then also basically saving the world so it’s not just limited to what’s going on in Cairo.

And I think it’s a good pairing with the House of Two Sisters, not just because of the location, but they’re both described as cinematic and atmospheric, so I think with this book, you really get that flavor of ancient Egypt and the sort of mystical aspects of it.

Rebecca Vnuk: Awesome.

April Mazza: Then my other book is another totally unconventional choice, totally different genre, but I think the listeners will really like it because it is book-related and if you love books, I think you’ll wanna read this.

It’s called Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef, and it’s Nadia’s memoir of starting an independent bookstore in Cairo with her sister and their friend. This was really notable because they were young, they had no business experience, but most importantly, nothing like this store really existed before, an independent bookstore. Books were considered a luxury, not a necessity, and then certainly not a business created and run by women. So they faced a lot of obstacles. The store is called Diwan and there are now several locations around Egypt. And I visited two when I was there. I couldn’t resist. One was the flagship store, totally beautiful, so much fun, and then one was sort of a neighborhood store. And of course I had to buy up all the bookmarks and fun things in the bookstore. And again, like if you like reading about books and other cultures, this is gonna hit the mark. I especially liked how the book’s chapters are named after the sections in the bookstore and then the chapter’s about that subject. So, for instance my favorite was the cookbook chapter, and it’s about Egyptian cooking and the author’s memories and experiences with food and food culture in Egypt. There was also a business section, and that’s really about starting and running the bookstore and all the challenges they faced. So like with Rachel’s book, you get a story that takes place in Egypt, but it also involves sisters and those relationships and really the challenges you can face, too, having these sort of family relationships and overlapping with the work you do. But it’s also atmospheric, not like a curse or a mystical way, but I felt like it really brought to life what growing up and living in Cairo’s like, whether it’s in the past or current day.

Rebecca Vnuk: Awesome. I absolutely adore that, and that, again, it’s a perfect example of in depth readers advisory right there. You’re picking a book that is not the same ’cause it’s not a mystery, it’s not a family, it’s totally opposite. It’s modern, it’s nonfiction, it’s memoir. And yet, look how lovely it dovetails together with that book. And that to me, that is a prime example of the art of reader’s advisory. I love it. I love it. It’s so easy to just go with the obvious. “Oh, we’ve got Egyptologists, great. Put them together. You’re gonna like it!” And I just love that this is so much more in depth and choosing something that is along the same lines, but not an obvious answer. So that is, that’s awesome.

April Mazza: I think it’s how my brain works because there are some other similar like historical fiction that you could do that takes place in Egypt or maybe even like Morocco or something like that, but the way my brain works was again, thinking a little bit deeper into the themes and obviously location, I think that’s pretty important, I think, for when you’re looking at things like the pyramids, like that’s a very unique geographical area, so it was a lot of fun too, to think of what would fit, because I didn’t wanna just pick it because it took place in the same place.

Rebecca Vnuk: I love that. So, great. Well, we will check you all out at the Circ Desk next time!