I loved my chat with author Fiona Davis about her bestselling novel, The Stolen Queen. This is Fiona’s 8th novel. She didn’t start writing novels until she was 45 and her first national bestseller, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, came out eight years later when Fiona was 53. Each of her books is set in a New York City landmark from Radio City Music Hall to The Chelsea Hotel to the New York Public Library. Below is just an edited snippet from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode here on Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Stolen Queen follows a dual-timeline story taking us first to New York in 1978 where a 60-year-old, shy, studious woman named Charlotte Cross, working as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, is unwillingly teamed up with a 19-year-old overexcited staffer for the Met Ball named Annie to track down a stolen artifact. These two women could not be more different and to Cairo they go. There’s a cameo from Diana Vreeland who made the Met Ball what it is. Fiona called her ‘a tornado’ of a woman.
Fiona’s fast-paced, detail-rich novel, which she describes as part Indiana Jones, part Thelma and Louise and part The Devil Wears Prada, made me want to hop on a plane to Cairo. I wanted to experience the hazy sand-filled orange sky, the ancient tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and the chaotic maize-like streets of Cairo.
We travel back in time to 1936 Egypt where a much younger 18-year-old Charlotte heads to Egypt as part of her university studies to be the Girl Friday for a group of archaeologists. There, tragedy strikes causing Charlotte to flee Egypt, never to return again until fate intervenes 42 years later, ie 1978.
Elena: What is your process? Do you start with the story or the building?
The building definitely. I was a journalist before I started writing fiction, and so doing all that research is important to me. That’s where all my story ideas come from. I try and not think about characters or story, just let the history wash over me and little details will start to stick. It’s just a matter of doing enough research and trusting my gut.
For the research on the New York Public Library for The Lions of Fifth Avenue, I found that they built a seven-room apartment deep inside the library for the super and his family to live in. They lived there for 30 years. Their daughter was born in the library. I read that and thought, okay, a family living in the library, where do I go from there?
Elena: And for The Stolen Queen, what sparked that story?
I saw that the pharaoh Hatshepsut had a whole gallery at the Met and realised wow, this was an important woman. And then I learned about how she was really lost to history. That’s one of the things I’m drawn to, every book I’ve done, there’s been some character inspired by a woman who got shafted.
Elena: Can you tell us a little bit about Hatshepsut?
Hatshepsut was Egyptian royalty. She married her half-brother at the age of 12 as one did in Egyptian royalty. He died not long after and she didn’t have a son. And so, the, the crown went to the son of one of the concubines, but it was a baby.
So, in the meantime, Hatshepsut stepped up and became the regent. And she ruled as the Pharaoh for 20 years, very successfully. There were all these advances, peace and prosperity. And then she died. And at some point, her stepson, who came to power, ordered many of her statues destroyed, her images hacked out of any reliefs. And so because of that, Hatshepsut was really lost to history. People knew she ruled, but they didn’t know much about her.
And it wasn’t until the Met team were doing a dig in the 1920s, they found this huge quarry filled with her statues and realized, she must have been very important. But what happened? And they said, well, it must’ve been that the stepson was angry that she ruled for so long. The Met catalog described her in the fifties as a vain, ambitious, unscrupulous woman and a detested stepmother.
But then 10 years later a scholar found that the destruction had to have happened at least 24 years after her death which is a long time to hold a grudge. And they realized, no, it was about the line of succession. The stepson wanted his son to rule and didn’t want the idea of a female pharaoh out in the zeitgeist. So that’s why he did it. Her journey as a woman pharaoh has been fraught in a way that male pharaohs rarely are.
Not only did this book make me want to explore far-flung locales, but it also made me want to consider exploring what’s closer to home, namely The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fiona’s web site has a scavenger hunt page where several objects mentioned in The Stolen Queen can be found at the Met. It’s quite a fun post-read activity.
My favorite object on the Met scavenger hunt was the Fragment of a Queen’s Face which in the novel is called the Cerulean Queen, linked to a fictional pharaoh Hathorkare who is based on the real life pharaoh Hatshepsut.
Second favorite was the broad collar:
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
If you like going to museums, or even if you don’t like going to museums, the key is to go and look at a museum, like the Met, not as a collection of objects, but as a collection of stories. Get a guide, join a tour, let the experts tell you about these objects. It gives you a much better sense of time, place, where we are now versus what things were like then.
Elena: Did you always know you wanted to write a book?
Never. No way. I loved reading, but never could have written a book. It wasn’t until I was about 45 and started. I had a story idea that I couldn’t shake and I wanted to read the book. And so I thought, I’ll just try writing, but I won’t tell a soul. No one will know. And that did eventually morph into my first book and I’m glad I waited. because when I was younger, I had nothing to say on the page. I hadn’t really lived life enough.
November, 2025
