Neti-Kerty's reputation as Egypt's first female mummifier has apparently reached all the way to the Pharaoh. Neti-Kerty and Shabaka, Special Investigator and Prefect of Thebes, are astonished to be summoned to the palace of Ramses II to investigate the sudden death of the Vizier Khay. Thanks to her powers of deduction and knowledge of the dead, Neti soon determines that something is amiss. As more people disappear during the investigation, the situation increasingly gets out of hands and before long Neti and Shabaka find themselves peering into the deepest recesses of the human soul.

Shabaka, the secretive Prefect, the Pharaoh’s special envoy charged with combating crime in the capital of the Pharaoh’s empire, also often makes use of Neti Kerty’s special talents. With her powers of deduction and knowledge of the dead, she has already helped solve many crimes.

Throughout antiquity Egypt was a land of hundreds of tiny villages, with constantly warring tribes, loosely divided between Upper and Lower Egypt. Then, in the space of a few extraordinary decades, the impossible happened. An incredible man, King Narmer (also known as Menes), united Upper and Lower Egypt. The First Pharaoh retells the story of Narmer and his epic journey, seen through his eyes and those of his Chief Scribe, the shaman Anhotek.

Drawn to his abandoned temple on the banks of the Nile by an enchanting song, Sobek the Crocodile God is even more captivated by the sight of the singer herself. Appearing to her as a man, he learns she is Merys, a descendant of his last priestess. Though filled with lust, Sobek believes Merys deserves to be more than just his mistress. But the rules that govern the Egyptian pantheon forbid anything beyond a physical joining of a Great One and a human.

After the untimely death of his older brother, six-year-old Prince Amenhotep IV becomes the unlikely heir to the Egyptian throne, the most powerful kingship in the ancient world. By the time he becomes pharaoh over a decade later, the growing influence of the wealthy and corrupt Amun priesthood threatens to undermine his sovereignty. Desperate to maintain power, Amenhotep outlaws the Amun religion, renames himself Akenaten, and proclaims himself the living incarnation of a single, all-powerful deity - the Aten, or sun.