Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself.
Stacy Schiff is that rare combination: a first-rate historian and a brilliant storyteller. Using a wide range of sources, she spins straw into gold, conjuring the world of Ptolemaic Egypt in full vibrant color, and returning the voice of one of the most powerful, fascinating, and maligned women in history. Cleopatra is impossible to put down. Her palace shimmered with onyx and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world.
Lily of the Nile tells the tale of Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Egypt, and Marc Antony of Rome. The novel opens with the death of Cleopatra soon after the fall of Egypt to Rome. Selene, her twin brother Helios and their half brother are taken back to Rome as war prizes for the emperor Octavian.
Four years before Julius Caesar sailed to Rome to meet his untimely end, the great leader sought to conquer the outer reaches of the land, always questing for a kindred spirit to rival his own. What he finds, sitting on top of an ancient Egyptian Sphinx, is a young Queen Cleopatra, who beguiles him not only with her beauty, but because she may be the very match he's been seeking.
This definitive portrait restores the Egyptian queen to her rightful historical status as a potent force in the ancient world--one whose policies and influence long survived her and played a determining role in the future course of the Roman empire.
