The Curse of the Pharaohs (Amelia Peabody #2), by Elizabeth Peters (author), Susan O'Malley (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9780786137060, March 2005 (original publication 1981)

Amelia Peabody Emerson is getting restless in English domesticity, and so is her husband, Radcliffe Emerson. Oh, they love their son Walter, a.k.a. Ramses, dearly, but they were not meant to live quietly at home in England, Emerson teaching archaeology rather than practicing it, and Peabody not having even that much professional outlet.

They are rescued by the unexpected and not entirely welcome arrival one night of Lady Baskerville, widow of amateur archaeology enthusiast and funder of excavations, Lord Baskerville. He had just discovered a new, possibly unplundered, tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and his sudden, seemingly natural death, is rumored to be the result of a curse. Also, his assistant, Armadale, has disappeared. People are quitting, and the tomb is endangered by being now known but yet incompletely guarded and not yet excavated. Lady Baskerville wants Emerson to take over as chief archaeologist of the expedition. Of course, because of young Ramses, he can't.

Strangers, by Mary Anna Evans--Book Review

Poisoned Pen Press, ISBN 9781590587423, 400 pp.
Publication date 10/01/2010

This is Evans' sixth novel about archeologist Faye Longchamp and her husband Joe Wolf Mantooth. I haven't read any of the others, and didn't find it an obstacle to following and enjoying this story. Faye has turned her archeology degree into a business rather than a tenure-track teaching position, and she, Joe, and their employees, including Magda Stockard-McKenzie, Ph.D., are in St. Augustine, FL, excavating the back yard of the Art Deco-era mansion, Dunkirk Manor, whose current owners want to add a swimming pool. Dunkirk Manor is in a historically rather uninteresting section of  St. Augustine, and it'a a relatively easy assignment, perfect for the last month or so of Faye's pregnancy. An unexpected bonus is the discovery, in a storeroom, of the journal of a priest, Father Domingo, who accompanied the first Spanish expedition to the St. Augustine area.

     Or so it seems, at least until Glynis Smithson, assistant to the owners, Daniel and Suzanne Wrather, disappears. Her car is parked out back, there's some blood in her car and a lot more just outside it--and if there was any trail of blood leading away from the car, it has possibly been washed away by the automatic sprinklers. There are also a few odd items in and near the car, artifacts apparently dating to the 16th-century arrival of the Spanish.

     Faye becomes involved in the investigation into Glynis's disappearance, which becomes a murder investigation when her boyfriend turns up dead, because of the archeological connection. At the same time, the excavation at Dunkirk Manor becomes more interesting, as they uncover evidence of a previous swimming pool, as well as buried 1920s-era children's toys in what looks very like a small shrine. As Faye learns more about both her employers and the 1920s owners, she discovers an unsolved murder of a beautiful starlet, and an odd parallel between Suzanne and her great-aunt Allyce Dunkirk, in that they both lost very young children whom they continued to mourn many years later. The archeological items and the fact that her boyfriend was murdered leads to the suspicion that Glynis was murdered or kidnapped because she discovered a construction project going forward illegally after discovering an unreported archeological site.

    Faye divides her attention amongst the Dunkirk Manor dig, Father Domingo's journal, the unsolved murder, and Glynis's disappearance, and they all tangle together in unexpected ways. And when she gets too close to some of the answers, the situation turns dangerous, and she's fighting for her life against an unexpected villain.

     I found Strangers engrossing and highly readable, and I'll probably be looking for more of Evans's books about Faye.

     Note:: I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley

The Janus Stone: A Ruth Galloway Mystery, by Elly Griffiths--Review

336 pp., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 9780547237442, Publication Date January 2011

Forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway is settling back into normal after the unsettling events of a few months ago when she gets a call from the head of the university archeology department. Construction workers on the site of an old house in Norwich that previously served as a children's home have found the bones of a young child. The bones need to be identified, and it needs to be determined as quickly as possible if this is an archeological find or a crime scene. Knowing the police need to be involved, Ruth calls Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, whom she's worked with in the past.
     What she hasn't yet told Nelson, who is married and has two teenage daughters, is that she's pregnant as a result of their one night of  "We Didn't Get Killed" sex four months ago.
      As they piece together the evidence and determine that they have the body of a young girl, they also learn that two children disappeared from the children's home in the early 1970s--and that one of them was a girl about the age of the child whose bones they have. And in the mid-1950s, the young daughter of the family living there at the time, when it was still a private home, also died at the right age--supposedly of scarlet fever.
     Meanwhile, another archeologist, Max Gray, working on a site in Swaffham, is showing a friendly and possibly more than friendly interest in Ruth. Ruth is interested, but does she need the complications? Will he still be interested when he knows she's pregnant?
     While she's juggling all these problems and complications, alarming things start to happen around Ruth. Someone sacrifices a cockerel and writes her name in blood at the Swaffham site. She hears someone breathing nearby when she's out in the dark, and stumbles and passes out when she sees what appears to be a dead baby--and turns out to to be a model from a museum exhibit.
     The tension develops nicely, and the mystery is satisfyingly complex and interesting. This is the second of the series, and some things, such as Ruth's pregnancy and the relationships among some of the characters, are products of the events of the earlier book, The Crossing Places. However, since I have not read it, I can feel completely confident in saying that this book stands on its own sufficiently to be a satisfying, enjoyable read.
     Strongly recommended.

     Note:: I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley