This image is the cover for the book Under the Desert Sands

Under the Desert Sands

On honeymoon, an archaeologist couple, Toby and Lucy, meet an emergency on Lake Nasser. A man, Hassan, was being attacked by a crocodile. Can they rescue him? Will he survive? Leaving the lake for the Western Desert and its oases. They go to Kharga and have a wonderful party. A fantasia entertains them with whirling dervishes, Nubian dancers and pipes of hashish being handed around. Then back on to the White Desert, a “Wonder of the World”. They get stuck in the deep sand and freeze in the cold night; dug out, a surprise in the hole left by their rear wheel. Is it what they hope? Is it part of a temple? Is it an archaeologist’s dream or just a lump of stone? Lucy bewitches a colonel in the Baharyah Oasis; he brings manpower to raise the block. Suddenly, the edge of the deep trench crumbles and sand and rubble collapse into the hole. What will become of the young couple?

Joanna Hill

Joanna worked in New York for a post grad department of New York University, the Institute of Fine Arts. Her first visit to Egypt was to work on the Institute’s excavation in the Nile Delta. She fell in love with the country. Joanna spent several summers on this dig before it was shut down at the time of the six day war. Back in England she was a dogsbody for Private Eye magazine while her two sons were still at home. She then moved with husband and assorted dogs to SW France where they lived for 20 years.Now retired she lives in a small apartment within her maternal grandmother’s old home in Sussex.

Austin Macauley Publishers