The clouds of World War I hang heavy over Cairo, as Amelia Peabody and her family return to Egypt for another season of archaeological excavation. The defiantly pacifist stance of Amelia and Emerson's headstrong son, Ramses, is earning the young man the derision, and much worse, of the British expatriate community. Meanwhile, the charismatic nationalist el Wardani is said to be formenting insurrection in the ancient city. And an exquisite sculpture found where it ought not to be confirms Amelia's most unsettling suspicion about the reemergence of her villainous archnemesis, Sethos, the Master Criminal. Here is a magnificent new masterwork in a series destined to make history.