A new year, 1917, is dawning, and the Great War that ravages the world shows no sign of abating. Answering the siren call of Egypt once more, Amelia Peabody and her family arrive at their home in Luxor to learn of a new royal tomb ransacked by thieves. Soon an even more disturbing outrage concerns the intrepid clan of archaeologists: the freshly and savagely slain corpse of a thief defiling the ancient burial site.

Yet this is nothing compared

In first-century-AD Rome, during the reign of Vespasian, Marcus Didius Falco works as a private "informer," often for the emperor, ferreting out hidden truths and bringing villains to ground. But even informers take vacations with their wives, so in AD 77, Falco and his wife, Helena Justina, with others in tow, travel to Alexandria, Egypt. But they aren't there long before Falco finds himself in the midst of nefarious doings—when the librarian