The Menmenet Box Set
A Menmenet Alternate History Novel Collection
Murder, money, mystery, and metaphysics come together in a collection of riveting alternative-history thrillers.
The Menmenet mysteries take place in a very different San Francisco colonized by the Egyptian Empire. A city of fog, temples, and mystery, Menmenet and the country of which it is the capital, the Ta'an-Imenty Republic, sit in an uneasy tension with the First Peoples' nations and the United States to the East. They get along well enough with the Aztec Republic to the south, but the Russians from Russkaya Amerika to the north are a constant source of trouble.
Shesmu za-Akhen is a celebrity chef in Menmenet. Hutyt-er-Semetyu Cheryl MacIntyre is an emigrant from Boston in the United States trying to make her way in the homicide squad of the Menmenet medjau, the enforcers of ma'at. The trilogy of novels in the Menmenet Series tells their story.
The Jackal of Inpu tells the story of how Shesmu and MacIntyre met, a romantic mystery full of murder and misplaced religiosity.
In the second novel, The Lion of Bastet, the lovers follow the money amidst Aztec and Russian gangsters and temple priests dead set against them. The novel combines romance, police procedure, and religious conflict in a murder mystery that comes to a stunning conclusion.
The third novel, The Bull of Mentju, takes Shesmu and MacIntyre far out of their comfort zones. Shesmu confronts the mystery of his missing father in the high mountains to the east, encountering First Peoples shamans and their gods, while MacIntyre confronts a more prosaic problem: the United States is mounting a secret attempt to take over the small country with genocidal intent. Ancient gods and modern armies clash in this military and political thriller.
Enjoy all three novels in this box set of alternate history mysteries.
I tried to get up and found I couldn’t move at all, not even my head, but I could move my useless eyes. I just stared into the darkness. I felt very cold. I felt as though something was just outside my peripheral vision, and if I concentrated, it felt like the goddess Ma’at, I could glimpse her erect posture and white dress and the feather atop her head. Ma’at was remote, distant in an emotional way. She ignored me. I stretched my eyeballs back and forth to try to catch a real glimpse, and I thought bizarrely that Ma’at had a body and hair of gold. Then a Miwuk man strode into my sight out of the darkness, right in front of me.
For a moment, I thought it was Heh, the shaman, because the man wore a feather headband and apron, but I could see the coppery face was different, though familiar. Then I saw the man dressed in a Remetjy shendyt, the linen kilt all Remetjy men wore on formal occasions, but bare chested with his skin and his face green, the green of the dead, no longer coppery brown. He held a w’as-scepter, the staff of power of a god, in his right hand, as in all the old pictures, and I saw it was Heh’s walking stick. Then I saw the man had the head of a coyote. It was very strange: I still saw the Miwuk regalia, but I saw the Remetjy at the same time, and I saw the human head and the animal head at the same time. They weren’t switching back and forth or anything, I just saw them at the same time on the same man.
“Shesmu.” The man spoke my name, though his mouth never moved. It was a normal voice, just conversational in tone. “Son.” My heart exploded with the emotions of the five-year-old child I had been. I have no memory of my father’s face, how he stood, how he acted. My heart told me that this was indeed my father. Miwuk, Remetjy, Coyote—where was the reality of it? What was I really seeing?
Behind the Coyote appeared an incredible valley, like Heh’s valley of Hetchetci but much grander, cliffs rising to the sky, waterfalls dashing down from great heights to the valley floor. I didn’t actually see this place, I felt it. I felt Coyote’s presence in it. Coyote said, “Come.” My heart said go to him, my feet would not move. I had to choose which was right, my heart or my immobile body. Coyote said, “Learn. Atone. Come.”
I said, “Akhen, father” without moving my mouth. The Miwuk man looked up at me, growing smaller.
“Danger. Watch where you tread, and who treads with you,” he said. (from the Bull of Mentju)
