Sister, Sister: Five Novels About Sisters That Explore the Ties That Bind, Betray, and Break
Fun had definitely been invented by 1983, so my little sister and I put our own spin on it by playing There’s a Monster, now Run! Rules were simple: I was the monster. She ran. I was nearly 4 years older, so Lindsey was a goner. She died by monster multiple times. The most epic death was when I cornered her in the living room and made some proclamation about how she was caught and there was nowhere to run and bless her, she was committed. She pretended to pass out – right into the corner of the living room glass-topped coffee table. There was blood, a trip to the minor med, and some serious if not begrudging respect for her commitment to the bit. Sisterhood. It’s all fun and games until someone ends up with stitches.
The sisters in my debut novel The Sisters of Crimson House are playing their own game of Monster, Now Run! And just like with my own sister, no one explained the rules. Charley Bryde hasn’t stopped running from monsters real and imagined. She grew up in a house filled with powerful psychics who failed to predict the tragedy that would shatter their entire existence. When the job of maintaining the family business – and crumbling family mansion – falls to Charley, the only one without any magical ability, she’s making up the rules as she goes. When her older sister Miranda, a powerful and world renowned medium, returns after an unforgivably long absence, their reunion brings about a major reckoning. It’s personal. It’s supernatural. They are their own storm fronts colliding to form one hell of an emotional bomb cyclone. But at the end of the day, they are bonded by blood, by a family legacy they can no longer outrun.
In writing about these complicated and calculating sisters, I was struck by how many of my favorite narratives feature a riveting sister dynamic at their core. Families are literally the ties that bind; the assumption that sisters will be each other’s champions can backfire spectacularly when the ghosts of jealousy, sibling rivalry, and familial expectation rise to haunt these sisters’ houses.
While I ponder whether Hurricane Charley or Hurricane Miranda would be more destructive, here are five complex yet celebrated sister pairings from five unforgettable books.
Melissa Anderson Sweazy is a filmmaker and the host of the true ghost story podcast You Can See Me in the Dark. Her debut novel The Sisters of Crimson House arrives September 29 by Sourcebooks Landmark.
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For fans of Starling House, The September House, and Practical Magic comes a haunting Southern Gothic horror following one woman from a long line of psychics who will do anything to save her family legacy and the haunted house she grew up in from an entity threatening to destroy everything she’s built.
Every house has its secrets.
Charley Bryde is miserable in a house filled with magic. The only woman in a long line of famous psychics to not inherit the family gift, she spends her days inside Crimson House, the coveted family mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, living in the shadows of her talented older sister, Miranda. But when a shocking tragedy scatters the Brydes across the globe, Charley is forced to grow up on her own, and fast. As the money runs dry and Charley’s ownership of Crimson House is put at risk, she’s left with no other option; turn the manor into a haunted attraction and start representing the family brand with lies, cons, and expertly read tarot cards.
When a skeptic starts targeting Charley for the fraud that she is, she’ll stop at nothing to save the family legacy. But the skeptics’ arrival cracks something open in Charley that the Brydes wanted to remain buried. Deep. And when Miranda shows up unannounced after eight years away, the two will come to realize that Crimson House, and their own family, hold secrets even the greatest psychics couldn’t foresee. Secrets that will threaten to destroy them.
