The God Collector — Catherine Butzen

Their love is ancient history if they can't catch the thief out to kill them.

Theodora Speer loves her job at the Columbian Exposition Museum designing murals, but a sense of movement-in her art and in her life-eludes her. She meets the museum's enigmatic donor Seth Adler while working on a new exhibit: a strange cache of shabtis, or clay funerary figurines, accompanying a prize mummy, and something sparks. Seth Adler's interest in the Egyptian artifacts and in Theo goes deeper than patronage, but he can't tell her that. A series of robberies has everyone on edge and when the Columbian is hit, Theo and Seth are implicated. Someone thinks there was more to the ancient Egyptian funeral rites than meets the eye and wants the mummy and his grave goods. Seth and Theo are forced on the run, and it may be too much movement for strict realist Theo to keep up with. But the man-and the mummy-are more than she realized. And if she can't reconcile the past and the present, she and Seth may have no future.

Warning: A hero with an affinity for grave dust and an artist who'd like to do more than nail his unique skin tone to the wall. Contains an off-label use for paint thinner you WON'T want to try at home. Try to keep up!