Elizabeth Peters

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  • Bibliography:
    47 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1968
  • Latest Book:
    May 2024
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About the Author

Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Mertz) was born and brought up in Illinois and was the author of Lion in the Valley, Trojan Gold and Street of the Five Moons among many other mysteries. She held a PhD in Egyptology from the University Of Chicago, has reviewed for the Washington Post Book World, and has been a judge for the Mystery Writers of America. She wrote the popular Amelia Peabody series. She died in 2013 aged 85.

Full Series List in Order

An Amelia Peabody Mystery

1 - Crocodile on the Sandbank (Apr-1975)
2 - The Curse of the Pharaohs (Jun-1981)
3 - The Mummy Case (Mar-1985)
4 - Lion in the Valley (Apr-1986)
5 - The Deeds of the Disturber (Apr-1988)
6 - The Last Camel Died at Noon (Sep-1991)
7 - The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog (Oct-1992)
8 - The Hippopotamus Pool (Apr-1996)
9 - Seeing a Large Cat (Jul-1997)
10 - The Ape Who Guards the Balance (Sep-1998)
11 - Falcon at the Portal (Jun-1999)
12 - He Shall Thunder in the Sky (May-2000)
13 - Lord of the Silent (May-2001)
14 - The Golden One (Apr-2002)
15 - Children of the Storm (Apr-2003)
16 - Guardian of the Horizon (Mar-2004)
17 - The Serpent on the Crown (Mar-2005)
18 - Tomb of the Golden Bird (Apr-2006)
19 - A River in the Sky (Apr-2010)
20 - The Painted Queen (Jul-2017)

A Jacqueline Kirby Mystery

1 - The Seventh Sinner (Apr-1972)
2 - The Murders of Richard III (Jun-1974)
3 - Die for Love (1984)
4 - Naked Once More (Sep-1989)

A Vicky Bliss Mystery

1 - Borrower of the Night (1973)
2 - Street of the Five Moons (Apr-1978)
3 - Silhouette in Scarlet (Jan-1983)
4 - Trojan Gold (Apr-1987)
5 - Night Train to Memphis (Sep-1994)
6 - The Laughter of Dead Kings (Aug-2008)

Book List in Order: 47 titles

  • The Jackal's Head

    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    Althea Tomlinson says she has returned to Egypt to see the sights, and to chaperon a spoiled teenager through this strange and breathtaking desert land. The truth is more complex...and dangerous. Ten years ago, something here brought about her father...

  • Camelot Caper

    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    Jessica Tregarth went to England to visit her grandfather: an invitation which surprised and pleased her. The only link she had with her dead father's family was an antique ring he had brought with him to America. This would be a chance to learn more...

  • The Dead Sea Cipher

    ODYSSEY OF TERROR Beirut . . Sidon . . . Tyre ... Damascus .. . These fabled cities became places of sinister mischief and sudden violence as lovely young Dinah searched for the secret that would explain the strange markings on a torn piece of pap...

  • The Seventh Sinner

    A Jacqueline Kirby Mystery - 1

    For vibrant, lovely Jean Suttman, the fellowship to study in Rome was the culmination of all her dreams-until she undertook an innocent expedition to the ancient subterranean Temple of Mithra. From the moment she stepped into the pagan darkness an...

  • Borrower of the Night

    • / Amateur Sleuth
    • Buy Buy
    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 1

    It began as a game, a treasure hunt in an old German castle. For Vicky Bliss -- tall, beautiful, and brilliant -- it was also a challenge, a chance to bring an arrogant young man down a notch or two. And all things considered, it would have been no c...

  • The Murders of Richard III

    A Jacqueline Kirby Mystery - 2

    Was Richard III Framed? When attractive American Jacqueline Kirby is invited to an English country mansion for a weekend costume affair, she expects only one mystery. Since the hosts and guests are all fanatic devotees of King Richard III, they ho...

  • Crocodile on the Sandbank

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 1

    In Victorian England, A Woman Wasn't Supposed To Be An Archaeologist Or A Detective. Amelia Peabody Was Both. Thirty-one-year-old Victorian gentlewoman, Amelia Peabody has inherited her father's strong will as well as his considerable fortune. ...

  • The Legend in Green Velvet

    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

    Susan had been infatuated with everything Scottish for as long as she could remember. When she arrived in Scotland to work on an archaeological dig, she thought it was a dream come true. But now the dream was rapidly becoming a nightmare. She had ...

  • Devil May Care

    Ellie is young, rich, engaged and in love. These are the carefree days before marriage and new responsibility, and anything goes -- including house-sitting at eccentric Aunt Kate's palatial estate in Burton, Virginia. Ellie feels right at home here w...



  • Street of the Five Moons

    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 2

    What did it mean? The note with the hieroglyphs was found in the pocket of a man lying dead in an alley. The only other item of interest was a piece of jewelry, a reproduction of the Charlemagne talisman. It was good, so good that Vicky Bliss thought...

  • Summer of the Dragon

    The job was 600 miles away from home and that made it perfect. It didn't even matter that Hank Hunnicutt had a reputation as a kook; he was, D.J. Abbott thought, merely eccentric. After all, didn't he surround himself with every self-proclaimed pract...

  • The Love Talker

    SOMETHING AS OLD AS TIME AND AS EVIL AS HELL WAS STALKING HER. When Laurie Carlton and her brother Douglas arrived at their aunt's home in answer to a cry for help, strange things began to happen. Eerie lights and weird music broke open the nig...

  • The Curse of the Pharaohs

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 2

    Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson, heroic survivors of Crocodile on the Sandbank, are called back to Egypt by Lady Baskerville to complete the excavation of a recently discovered tomb. The dig had been left unfinished by her newly dead--and possib...

  • The Copenhagen Connection

    Elizabeth Jones went to Copenhagen thinking only of quiet study. Then an accident brought her into the inner circle of Nobel Prize-winning historian Margaret Rosenberg, and Margaret's scornful son Christian. In a foreign world of glamour and intri...

  • Silhouette in Scarlet

    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 3

    He was a thief, a cheat, irresistibly wicked -- and the pounding of her pulse was louder than the message from her brain. Three days later the statuesquely beautiful Dr. Victoria Bliss had left the National Museum with a one-way ticket to Stockhol...

  • Die for Love

    • / Amateur Sleuth
    • Buy Buy
    A Jacqueline Kirby Mystery - 3

    BUT IS MURDER TAX-DEDUCTIBLE? Jacqueline Kirby decided to get away from the weather and doldrums at Coldwater College in Nebraska. A trip to New York would be ideal and since she is the assistant head librarian at the college she can take the trip...

  • The Mummy Case

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 3

    They first saw the mummy case carelessly propped against the Baroness' grand piano like some outre parlor ornament. It watt a relatively insignificant mummy case, as such things go ... and no one suspected the mystery behind its enigmatic facade. ...

  • Lion in the Valley

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 4

    A SEASON TO REMEMBER The digging season of 1895-96 promised to be a wonderful one: Amelia Peabody, her irascible and doting husband Emerson, and their hell-raising--and precocious--eight-year-old son Ramses were off to Egypt. And true to his word,...

  • Trojan Gold

    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 4

    A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS But the photograph art historian Vicky Bliss has just received gives rise to a thousand questions instead. A quick glance at the blood-stained envelope is all the proof she needs that something is horribly wron...



  • The Deeds of the Disturber

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 5

    When the body of a night watchman is found sprawled in the shadow of a rare 19th-Dynasty mummy case, panic ensues. For no one doubts that the guard's untimely demise is the work of an ancient Egyptian curse. No one, that is, except that tart-tongued ...

  • Naked Once More

    A Jacqueline Kirby Mystery - 4

    She may be a bestselling author, but ex-librarian Jacqueline Kirby's views on the publishing biz aren't fit to print. In fact, she's thinking of trading celebrity for serenity and a house far away from fiendish editors and demented fans when her agen...

  • The Last Camel Died at Noon

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 6

    The last camel is dead, and Egyptologist Amelia Peabody, her dashing husband, Emerson, and precocious son, Ramses, are in dire straits on the sun-scorched desert sands. Months before, back in cool, green England, Viscount Blacktower.had approached th...

  • The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits

    An unexpected "gift" has arrived for Carol Farley this Christmas: an envelope bearing a newspaper clipping and no return address. There, blurred but unmistakable, is a photo of a man missing for years and feared dead -- Carol's father. It is a siren ...

  • The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 7

    Aboard a boat traveling up the Nile, their delightful (but catastrophically precocious) son, Ramses, back in England, Amelia Peabody and her handsome husband, Emerson, just might have a second honeymoon while they search for Nefertiti's tomb. On the ...

  • Night Train to Memphis

    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 5

    An assistant curator of Munich's National Museum, Vicky Bliss is no expert on Egypt, but she does have a Ph.D. in solving crimes. So when an intelligence agency offers her a luxury Nile cruise if she'll help solve a murder and stop a heist of Egyptia...

  • The Hippopotamus Pool

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 8

    A masked stranger offers to reveal an Egyptian queen's lost tomb ... and Amelia Peabody and her irascible archaeologist husband are intrigued, to say the least. When the guide mysteriously disappears before he tells his secret, the Peabodys sail to T...

  • Seeing a Large Cat

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 9

    The year is 1903. The place is Cairo. And preparing to tackle an archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings, the intrepid Amelia Peabody dreams of a large cat, an Egyptian sign of good luck. In fact, an ominous message warning "Stay away from tomb...

  • Az Murder Goes . . . Artful

    Raymond Chandler called it The Simple Art of Murder, a misleading title. It never has been simple to write mysteries. But it is an art, and often the crimes investigated are rooted in the worlds of art, architecture, and antiquities.
    Where there i...

  • The Ape Who Guards the Balance

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 10

    The prospects for the 1907 archaeological season in Egypt seem fairly dull to Amelia. As a result of Emerson's less-than-diplomatic behaviour they have been demoted to examining only the most boring tombs in the Valley of the Kings - mere leftovers, ...



  • Her Cousin John

    The Face of Evil From the moment lovely young Jessica Tregarth set foot in England, terror tore at her. She had never seen the dark young man who attempted to do her violence, but she would never forget his face, those mocking eyes, that grotesque...

  • Falcon at the Portal

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 11

    Amelia and family have arrived in Egypt for the 1911 archeological season--after the marriage of young Ramses' best friend David to Amelia's niece Lia. But trouble finds them immediately when David is accused of selling ancient artifacts. While Ameli...

  • He Shall Thunder in the Sky

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 12

    Trouble is brewing in Egypt at the close of 1914 and no one will escape the fury of the tempest to come. With the world around them at war, Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson have returned to Cairo for another season of archaeological e...

  • Lord of the Silent

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 13

    For archaeologist Amelia Peabody and her family, the allure of Egypt remains as powerful as ever, even in this tense time of World War. But nowhere in this desert land is safe -- especially for Amelia's son Ramses and his beautiful new wife Nefret. T...

  • The Golden One

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 14

    A richly woven tale of romance, treachery, intrigue, and murder in a breathtaking realm of ancient wonders and crumbling splendor. A new year, 1917, is dawning, and the Great War that ravages the world shows no sign of abating. In these perilous t...

  • Children of the Storm

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 15

    A Great War has ended, but evil still casts a long shadow over a violence-scarred land. One woman -- an adventurer and archaeologist with a brilliant mind -- must now confront a dreadful adversary more fiendish and formidable than any she has ever en...

  • Amelia Peabody's Egypt

    ****Amelia Peabody's Egypt was originally published in 2003; minor changes are being made to the July 2017 edition, but it basically the same book****The Egypt that so enticed and enchanted intrepid archaeologist-sleuth Amelia Peabody in the late ...

  • Guardian of the Horizon

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 16

    A hitherto lost journal of the indomitable Amelia Peabody has been miraculously recovered: a chronicle from one of the "missing years" -- 1907 -- 1908 -- shedding new light on an already exceptional career, a remarkable family . . . and an unexpected...

  • The Serpent on the Crown

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 17

    A priceless relic has been delivered to the Emerson home overlooking the Nile. But more than history surrounds this golden likeness of a forgotten king, for it is said early death will befall anyone who possesses it. The woman who implores the ren...

  • Tomb of the Golden Bird

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 18

    A sinister plot and a dark family secret stand in the way of the Emerson clan's ultimate ambition… Banned forever from the eastern end of the Valley of the Kings, eminent Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson's desperate attempt to regain digging rights ...



  • Thunder in the Sky

    It is 1914 and Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson are back in Egypt for another season of archaeological excavation. But this year a new menace hangs over the dig: rumblings of war abound in Europe while over in the East, Turkish and German force...

  • The Laughter of Dead Kings

    A Vicky Bliss Mystery - 6

    Who stole one of Egypt's most priceless treasures? The Egyptian authorities and Interpol believe they know the identity of the culprit: "Sir John Smythe," the suave and dangerously charming international art thief who is, in fact, John Tregarth, the ...

  • A River in the Sky

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 19

    August 1910. Banned from the Valley of the Kings, Amelia Peabody and husband Emerson are persuaded to follow would-be archaeologist Major George Morley on an expedition to Palestine. Somewhere in this province of the corrupt, crumbling Ottoman Empire...

  • The Painted Queen

    An Amelia Peabody Mystery - 20

    Egypt, 1912 -- Amelia Peabody and her dashing archeologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson, are once again in danger as they search for a priceless, stolen bust of legendary Queen Nefertiti and Amelia finds herself the target of assassins in this long-awa...

  • Mystery Stories

    A Christmas slaying, an Egyptian puzzle, and a night in the home of a stranger -- three chillers from the New York Times-bestselling author. A thriller writer is embroiled in a real-life whodunit when a friend drops dead in front of her, with her...

  • Smoke and Mirrors

    Previously published under the pseudonym Barbara Michaels (January 1989) An idealistic young woman finds working a political campaign can be murder in this romantic suspense novel by “a master storyteller” (Mary Higgins Clark). Young Erin ...

  • The Locked Tomb Mystery

    Four classic stories by the New York Times bestselling grandmaster of mystery, each paired with an incisive new introduction. A thriller writer is embroiled in a real-life whodunit when a friend drops dead with her hatpin impaled in his back. The vio...

  • The Scroll of Wadi Qumran

    • / Romantic Suspense
    • Buy Buy

Award-Winning Books by Elizabeth Peters

Children of the Storm
2003 RT Reviewers Choice Award -- Historical Mystery
He Shall Thunder in the Sky
2000 RT Reviewers Choice Award -- Historical Mystery
Naked Once More
1989 Agatha Award -- Novel
Seeing a Large Cat
1997 RT Reviewers Choice Award -- Historical Romantic Mystery


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Elizabeth Peters has published 47 books.

Elizabeth Peters does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Locked Tomb Mystery, was published in May 2024.

The first book by Elizabeth Peters, The Jackal's Head, was published in January 1968.

Yes. Elizabeth Peters has 3 series.
Pseudonyms / Co-Author
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