Embalmed Alive and Other Tales of Egyptian Mummies

We are back in Egypt for the next Nezu Press release. Aside from being a rather big one (618 pages long!), it's also the first Nezu Press anthology.

As you probably know already, I am an Egyptophile, and this project has been a real labour of love for me. Of the thirty-two tales included, half of them were written by women, a third have not been republished since they first appeared in print, and of the rest a number have been republished only once before. Also, though many of us tend to think of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (death on swift wings, and all that) as the inspiration for lots of mummy curse stories being written, these tales were published between 1827 and 1939, and all but two of them appeared before Carter and Carnarvon made their famous find towards the end of 1922.

There is a 29-page introductory essay by yours truly: ‘Cure Me, Thrill Me, Kill Me! The Mummy: From Magical Cure to Murderous Curse’. And there are forty black-and-white illustrations too, some of which accompanied the tales when they were first published. The stories included are: 

The Mummy (excerpt, 1827) - Jane Webb Loudon

The Mummy’s Soul (1862) - Anonymous

After Three Thousand Years (1868) - Jane G. Austin

Lost in a Pyramid; Or, the Mummy’s Curse (1869) - Louisa May Alcott

The Egyptian Amulet (1881) - Mrs M. Sheffey Peters

The Paraschites (1889) - Mallard Herbertson (pseud. of Marie Hutcheson)

The Curse of Vasartas (1889) - Eva M. Henry

Embalmed Alive (1890) - Gustave Toudouze

Xartella (1891) - Florence Carpenter Dieudonné

Lot No. 249 (1892) - A. Conan Doyle

The Unseen Man’s Story (1893) - Julian Hawthorne

Robber of the Dead (1894) - Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma

At the Pyramid of the Sacred Bulls (1896) - Charles J. Mansford

Pharaoh’s Curse (1897) - Lucian Sorrel

The Story of Baelbrow (1898) - E. and H. Heron (pseud. of Kate and Hesketh Pritchard)

The Mummy Necklace (1899) - Arabella Romilly

The Spirit of Amenof (1899) - Countess De Sulmalla

The Mummy and the Moth (1900) - Agnes Warner McClelland

The Mummy Hand (1901) - Adeline Sergeant

The Skirts of Chance (1902) - Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Dead Hand (1904) - Hester White

A Professor of Egyptology (1904) - Guy Boothby

The Bulb (1906) - Clive Pemberton

The Soul of a Mummy (1908) - Blanche Bloor Schleppy

The Secret of Horeb-Ra-Men (1909) - Edwin Wooton

The Case of Professor Engelbach (1909) - Derek Vane (pseud. of Blanche Eaton Back)

The Necklace of Dreams (1910) - W. G. Peasgood

The Dead Face (1910) - Frederick Graves

Smith and the Pharaohs (1913) - H. Rider Haggard

The Mummy’s Foot (1914) - Jessie Adelaide Middleton

Black Coffee (1929) - Jeffery Farnol

The Mummy of Ret-Seh (1939) - A. Hyatt Verrill

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-17-5

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 618 pages

Published: 15 July 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Now, I’ve had a good old chuckle at some of the real-life curse stories I’ve come across over the years. You know the sort of thing: reports of endless things going wrong when a person so much as looks at a mummy case sideways. But I have to admit that while putting together the cover for this book, and working with the image of the coffin of Lady Tadi-en-hent awy, I have never encountered so many problems during what is usually a straightforward process. In the end, it took five hours to assemble the jacket. Sections of artwork moved without anyone touching them (the text section on the back cover repeatedly moved closer to the coffin on the front), and the colours changed every time the final file was saved. After going back and starting from scratch, the shenanigans began all over again. The design software presets repeatedly unset themselves, spaces in the text disappeared, the titles changed colour, and I half expected the final jacket file to be rejected by the printer! Thankfully, everything worked out in the end.

Lady Tadi-en-hent awy’s coffin resides in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and I used to visit the museum regularly when I was a child; in fact, that is where my interest in ancient Egypt was born (along with my love of Pre-Raphaelite art). It’s one of two Egyptian coffins in the museum’s collection, and the other, that of Namenkhetamun, still contains the mummy (the name is that of a lady, but the mummy inside is apparently male). Anyway, I hope that Lady Tadi-en-hent awy approves of the cover. It was important to the ancient Egyptians that they were remembered after death, so I think she'll be pleased about you all knowing her name.

In the Dwellings of the Wilderness ~ C. Bryson Taylor

I have a thing for Egypt. I think I've mentioned that before. I've had one ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, when I took part in a school play about the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb. I've also mentioned before that one of my favourite films is Hammer's The Mummy (1959). I also have a fondness for vampires (not the sparkly ones). So, you can imagine how over the moon and beside myself with joy I was when I first read Charlotte Bryson Taylor's In the Dwellings of the Wilderness... which contains a vampiric mummy! Did all of my Christmases come at once, or what!

Anyway, this wonderful book is the next Nezu Press offering, and it will be out on 8 June. The Independent (New York) described it as ‘A story with a new kind of thrill', and warned 'all who have nerves and nightmares against reading this book.' Current Literature was 'strongly reminded of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s work.' According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it is ‘Weird, almost grewsome, with an incongruity of modern practical life which serves to throw its other characteristics into all the stronger light.’

When Deane, Merritt, and Holloway uncover the entrance to a previously undisturbed tomb while digging in Egypt, they ignore the warning inscribed above its entrance to ‘wake not the soul that sleeps within’. They unblock the doorway marked ‘forbidden’ and uncover the mummy of an ancient Egyptian princess who was buried alive for her sins. And in opening the tomb, they release the devil that dwells within. 

First published in 1904, this new edition of In the Dwellings of the Wilderness includes a 20-page biographical essay by yours truly, “Charlotte Bryson Taylor: ‘Clever Writer of Fiction’ and ‘Angel’ of Washington Fire Department”, which contains a large amount of new information about the author of this atmospheric tale of the mummy’s curse.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-16-8

Case laminate hardback, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6" x 9"), 114 pages

Published: 8 June 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Book News ~ The House of Terror by Gerald Biss

The second Gerald Biss offering that's coming out in March is The House of Terror, first published by Greening & Co. Ltd. in 1909. The new Nezu Press edition sports a dashingly good-looking dust jacket featuring a painting by Les Edwards (Edward Miller) and includes a 16-page biographical essay by yours truly: ‘Gerald Biss: The Most Lovable Soul That Ever Existed’ (which is also included in The Door of the Unreal).

Beth Holyoake, an orphan in whose life so far ‘love had no chance’, is called home to a house she has not lived in since she was a young child by her dead father’s twin brother, Lord Angmering. She has high hopes for this new chapter in her life, but her uncle is a controlling bully who wants to marry her off to his reckless drunkard of a son, and the entire household lives in fear of the family curse, ‘The Horror’ that is kept locked up in the east wing. Beth’s aunt, Lady Mary, is her only ally in the house, but she is too afraid of Lord Angmering and his son to be of any assistance. Only Jack Spalding, the estate manager, is able and willing to help Beth solve the mystery of ‘The Horror’ and free her from the clutches of Lord Angmering and his drunken son.

‘An exciting sensational story, with a horrifying mystery.’ ~ St. James’s Budget, November 1909.

‘A clever sensational novel… with much ingenuity and many thrills.’ ~ Manchester Courier, November 1909.

‘The story is told in such a way as to create excitement, and to keep it up until the book is closed.’ ~ Belfast News-Letter, January 1910.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-14-4

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6” x 9”), 224 pages

Published: 14 March 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.

Book News ~ The Door of the Unreal by Gerald Biss

Hooo-oooow are you today? Fangs for stopping by. It's been a wuff start to the year, but here's hoping for better things. Okay, enough of the werewolfing about.

As with last year and the one before, the first author Nezu Press is publishing this year is a chap. Gerald Biss, to be exact. And what a lovely chap he was; seriously, everybody loved him... And so do I. Two of his novels will be coming out next month, the first of which is The Door of the Unreal, originally published by Eveleigh Nash Company Limited in 1919. This new edition includes a 16-page biographical essay by me: ‘Gerald Biss: The Most Lovable Soul That Ever Existed’.

When people begin disappearing without a trace at a specific spot on the Brighton Road, the police are left without a clue, but Lincoln Osgood, a well-travelled American who is staying at nearby Clymping Manor, has a theory—one so fantastic, so ‘strange and bizarre beyond all words’, that he fears being labelled a lunatic. With limited time left before the next full moon, which falls on Walpurgis Night, he must convince Scotland Yard that there are werewolves at large in sleepy Sussex and that, if action is not taken in time, a young woman’s soul might be lost for ever. Told in a matter-of-fact way, with the feel of a tense thriller rather than a horror novel, one reviewer described The Door of the Unreal as ‘fascinating in its horrors and written with a skill which makes even the impossible seem likely’.

‘Mr. Biss has taken the legend of the “Werewolf,” brought it up to date, and woven around it a yarn as thrilling and mysterious as the most voracious reader after blood and thunder could possibly desire.’ ~ The Tatler, December 1919.

‘A story of the “creepy” order, fascinating in its horrors and written with a skill which makes even the impossible seem likely.’ ~ Sheffield Daily Telegraph, December 1919.

‘A well-written, splendidly-conceived, and thrilling piece of fiction… absorbing in the extreme.” ~ Sporting Times, November 1919.

ISBN-13: 978-1-917113-15-1

Hardback with dust jacket, 22.86cm x 15.24cm (6” x 9”), 230 pages

Published: 14 March 2026

The book is available to pre-order from the Nezu Press store (please click here); global shipping is available (with no tariffs for US customers). Alternatively, it will be available from the usual online retailers soon, and you can order it from bricks-and-mortar stores.