The Stolen Queen

In 1936, Charlotte Cross, an anthropology student, wins a place on an archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings. A tragedy there marks her for good, and her life takes a different course from the one she planned.

New York City, 1978. Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins gets a job working for Diana Vreeland, the former Vogue fashion editor, who is organizing the Met Gala at the museum. Diana's demands are whimsical and her standards exacting, so Annie spends her days scrambling to keep up.

Charlotte is by now associate curator in the Met's Department of Egyptian Art and keeps to a quiet routine. She has no interest in the gala. Her research centres on Hathorkare, a female pharaoh most Egyptologists dismiss as minor.

Then, on the night of the party, one of the department's most valuable artifacts disappears, and signs suggest Hathorkare's legendary curse has stirred again. Annie and Charlotte, an unlikely pair, set out to find it. A hunch sends them to Egypt, the one place Charlotte vowed never to see again, where her past may put them both in danger.

The novel alternates between the two years, moving from a dig site to a museum mystery.