The 1985-96 season promises to be an exceptional one for Egyptologist Amelia Peabody, her husband Emerson and their 8-year-old son Rameses. The much-coveted burial chamber in Dahshoor is theirs for the digging. Yet there is a great evil in the wind that caresses the hot sands sweeping through the bustling streets and marketplaces of Cairo.
The 1985-96 season promises to be an exceptional one for Egyptologist Amelia Peabody, her dashing husband Emerson and their precocious eight-year-old son Rameses. The much-coveted burial chamber in Dahshoor is theirs for the digging. Yet there is a great evil in the wind that caresses the hot sands sweeping through the bustling streets and marketplaces of Cairo. An expedition cursed by misfortune and the daring moonlit abduction of Rameses alerts Amelia to the presence of her arch-enemy, the Master Criminal. And his is now a personal quest for the most valuable and elusive prize of all: vengeance on the meddling lady archaeologist with the parasol who has sworn to deliver him to justice...Amelia Peabody herself!
I can't wait for the next Peabody story... I really do think [Elizabeth Peters'] books are great entertainment.
A writer so popular that the public library has to keep her books under lock and key. - Washington Post Book World
Think Miss Marple with early feminist gloss crossed with Indiana Jones... accomplished entertainment. - Guardian
Elizabeth Peters is a pen name of Barbara Mertz, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago's famed Oriental Institute. Over the course of her fifty-year career she wrote more than seventy mystery and suspense novels, and three nonfiction books on Egypt. She was the recipient of numerous writing awards, including grandmaster and lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America, Malice Domestic, and Bouchercon. In 2012 she was given the first Amelia Peabody Award, created in her honor, at the Malice Domestic convention. She died in 2013, leaving a partially completed manuscript of The Painted Queen.