The Collector's Daughter

Gill Paul

Genre: fiction

Bestselling author Gill Paul returns with a brilliant novel about Lady Evelyn Herbert, who grew up in Highclere Castle—the real Downton Abbey—and became the first person in modern times to enter the tomb of Ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamun. She was the daughter of the Earl of Carnarvon, brought up to make her society debut and follow it with a prestigious marriage. But popular and pretty Lady Evelyn Herbert had other ideas. First she fell for a man her mother didn’t approve of, then she accompanied her father to Egypt, leaving behind the world of etiquette and chaperones to work alongside archeologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings. In November 1922 the extraordinary happened when they discovered the burial place of Tutankhamun, packed full of gold and inconceivable riches. Evelyn was the first to crawl inside, the first person to see the treasures in three thousand years. She called it the “greatest moment” of her life—but soon afterwards a string of tragedies left her world a darker, sadder place. Newspapers claimed it was “the curse of Tutankhamun.” Howard Carter said no rational person would entertain such nonsense. Yet fifty years later, when an Egyptian academic came asking questions about what really happened in the tomb in 1922, it unleashed a new chain of events that seemed to threaten the happiness Eve had finally found.