The Last Camel Died at Noon

September 2, 1991
If Indiana Jones were female, a wife and mother who lived in Victorian times, he would be Amelia Peabody Emerson, an archeologist whose extraordinary adventures are guaranteed entertainment. This time Amelia, her handsome, fearless husband, Radcliffe, and their precocious 11-year-old son, Ramses, are in the Sudan, searching for archeologist Willoughby Forth, who disappeared 14 years earlier with his new wife. Rescued in the desert after every camel in their caravan dies, the Emersons are taken to a lost city where ancient Egyptian customs have been carried into modern times. There, entangled in two half-brothers' battle for the throne, Amelia and family fight for the freedom of the slave class while ferreting out the fate of Forth and his bride, and arranging to escape with their lives. Peters ( The Deeds of the Disturber ), who also writes as Barbara Michaels, laces her usual intricate plotting with Amelia's commonsense approach to hygiene and manners, and coyly delicate references to vigorously enjoyed connubial pleasures. Combining a fierce affection for her family with indefatigable independence, stalwart Amelia proves once again an immensely likable heroine. 35,000 first printing; Mystery Guild selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate.

Dear listener, put your modern-day stressors aside, step into 1907, and spend unfettered hours with the incomparable Barbara Rosenblat. In Elizabeth Peters's sixth delicious Peabody-Emerson adventure, word arrives that archaeologist Willoughby Forth and his young bride, who both disappeared in the Egyptian desert 14 years earlier, may still be alive. Emerson, "the greatest Egyptologist of this or any age"; his irrepressible wife, Peabody, of the "rampageous imagination"; and their terrifyingly verbal 10-year-old son, Ramses, set out to find the Forths and, instead, find themselves in dire peril. Rosenblat creates charming, clever characters of form and substance. Their conversation is droll, stimulating, and, for the overburdened listener, absolutely therapeutic. Her range of voices is one of the wonders of the universe. It doesn't get better than Barbara Rosenblat. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine