"Stay away from tomb Twenty-A!" says an ominous message delivered by an unseen hand.

The year is 1903, the place is Cairo, and with the new century, everything is changing for Amelia Peabody - except her affinity for danger. Headed for an archaeological dig in the awesome Valley of the Kings, she hopes the desert will yield up its secrets. Instead it will produce a macabre puzzle of murder, passion, and cruel deceit. Besides the warning about the tomb - which only makes it more intriguing to Amelia and her sexy if irascible husband, Emerson - Amelia finds Egypt spinning with demands that join like the threads of her destiny.

A request for help comes from an old friend whose husband has fallen for a spiritualist... a plea arrives from an expatriate Civil War colonel with a pretty daughter threatened by an unknown enemy...and a special headache is bestowed by her son Ramses, grown from a precocious child to a teenager, who strikes out with his cousin David and Amelia's beautiful ward Nefret toward an adventure that could turn a mother's hair white...

Even though her famous premonitions are telling her that trouble lies ahead, Amelia dreams of a large cat, an Egyptian sign of good luck. And when tomb Twenty-A finally reveals its secret, Amelia will need all the luck she can garner, and her detective skills, to keep those dearest to her from death... or an equally undesirable fate.