The Amelia Peabody series is a series of nineteen mystery novels and one non fiction companion volume written by Elizabeth Peters, featuring Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson, for whom the series is named. The novels blend satire (mostly of the adventure novel, such as written by H. Rider Haggard), mystery, romance, and comedy. The series spans a thirty-eight-year period from 1884 to 1923. Most of the books are primarily set in Egypt, with some installments including scenes set in England and Gaza. Of the in the series, only two do not take place in Egypt at all: (Deeds of the Disturber), set entirely in England, and A River in the Sky, set mostly in Ottoman-era Palestine.
The first installment, Crocodile on the Sandbank, was first published in 1975. By the late 1990s, new books were published at the rate of one annually, with many of the later books in the series appearing on the New York Times Bestseller List for fiction. The last installment in the series to be published, A River in the Sky, was released in 2010. It is the 19th novel in the series, which also includes a non-fiction companion book, Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium.
The series has primarily been written in chronological order, with the exception of Guardian of the Horizon and A River in the Sky, which are the 16th and 19th books to be published, but 11th and 12th in the chronology. Peters suggested that any future installments in the series may continue to be written out of sequence, as the series takes place in real time and the aging of the characters might preclude extending the series much further than the point at which it currently ends, in 1923.
The earlier books in the series are written entirely as first-person narrative, with the novels purporting to be edited versions of journals kept by Amelia. According to the series mythology, the initial cache of journals that provided the narrative for the Amelia Peabody series were discovered in the attic of the ancestral home of the Tregarth family in Cornwall, England, into which Amelia's as-yet unnamed granddaughter eventually married (see the Vicky Bliss series final installment The Laughter of Dead Kings).
Beginning with Seeing a Large Cat, Amelia's narrative is interspersed with excerpts from "Manuscript H," a third person narrative that follows the adventures of the younger generation of the family, the author of which is eventually revealed to be Walter 'Ramses' Emerson. On occasion, other points of view are introduced in the form of letters and additional manuscripts.
Read more about Amelia Peabody Series: Series Narrative, Character Inspirations, Chronology, Other Locations, Future of The Series
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