Trouble is brewing in Egypt at the close of 1914 and no one will escape the fury of the tempest to come. With the world around them at war, Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson have returned to Cairo for another season of archaeological excavation -- despite the increasing danger of an attack on the Suez Canal and on Egypt itself.

A terrible conflict looms. A long-simmering love affair is resolved. A dastardly plot twists like a serpent writhing in the desert sun. There is no escaping the onrushing hurricane that now threatens the Emersons and their world -- so Amelia plunges right into it.