60 riddles and conundrums inspired by the spirit of Ancient Egypt, illustrated beautifully with hieroglyphics and iconic images dating back to 3150 BC. Puzzles include 'The Labyrinth', 'The Temple of Anubis' and 'The Priest's Estate'. Each conundrum is full of secret treasures and traps for the unwary.

Kids will love this exciting excavation of ancient Egyptian myths as they follow along with the clever Marcy on a quest to save her dad from the belly of the sphinx! Many years have passed since the tale of Arthur and the Golden Rope, and Arthur is now a world-famous adventurer. If only his daughter Marcy shared his enthusiasm for exploration... Determined to bring out Marcy's adventurous side, Arthur sets off to Egypt to bring back the legendary Book of Thoth. When Arthur doesn't return, Marcy must follow in his footsteps. Can she overcome her fears and rescue her father from the clutches of the great Sphinx?

From a daring escape from revolutionary Iran, to the glittering night clubs of Paris; from the Caspian Sea to Wimbledon, from the halls of Princeton University to an exiled princess's palatial New York apartment, the story takes us on a dramatic journey in an epic and psychological novel of self-discovery, sexual obsession, exile and destiny.

This work tells the story of the Great Sphinx of Giza as egyptology has uncovered it. The author details the Sphinx's impact on the ancient world, on Arab writers, on Renaissance travellers, on the pioneers of Egyptology and on modern scholarship. He tells the story of the Sphinx's many bouts of excavation and restoration and above all, puts the Sphinx in the context of all that is known about ancient Egyptian history and religion.

Detective story writer Antonia Darcy and her husband Hugh Payne are asked to travel to Devon in order to prevent a murder on Sphinx Island, but they are far from enthusiastic as they suspect an elaborate joke. And when they hear that one of the house party guests is Romaine Garrison-Gore, another crime writer, they have no doubt that they will walk into a rather tedious variant of the Murder Weekend. After all, it is their tenth wedding anniversary and Major Payne's aunt, Lady Grylls, has been trying to think of a truly original present for them... But then they receive a rather sinister letter signed 'The Riddler' and become curious... could the devil speak true?

The Curious History of the Riddle investigates the fascinating origin and history of the riddle, from the very first riddle (the Riddle of the Sphinx) to the twenty-first century, with riddles found in pop culture, including movies (Us), television shows (Game of Thrones) video games, and escape rooms. Riddles are ageless, timeless, and so common that we hardly ever reflect upon what they are and how they originated. Most importantly, their invention helped in the development of lateral thinking, the form of thinking that is the foundation of all kinds of discoveries, from mathematics to science and beyond. In The Curious History of the Riddle, puzzle expert Marcel Danesi delves deep into the riddle's origin and history and covers these fascinating topics: 1. The Riddle of the Sphinx: Origins, Legends, Patterns What creature walks on all fours at dawn, two at midday, and three at twilight? (answer: man) 2. The Greek Anthology and the Exeter Book: Medieval Views and Uses of Riddles This chapter looks at the spread of the riddle in recreational and educational contexts. 3. The Merry Book of Riddles: Riddles in the Renaissance By the late Renaissance, riddles were being tailored more and more to produce humorous or whimsical effects. 4. Enigmas, Charades, and Conundrums: Riddles from the 1600s to the Twentieth Century After the Renaissance, riddles had become virtually every literate European person’s favorite form of recreation, and were included as regular features of many newspapers and periodicals 5. The Twentieth Century: Riddles as Children’s Literature In the twentieth century, riddles became specialized for children, spreading throughout children’s literature and educational manuals. 6. The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Riddles Go to the Movies and Online In this chapter, the focus is on riddles in various entertainment media, from best-selling novels such as Harry Potter, to movies, such as the Batman series. 7. Connections: Riddles and Rebuses This chapter explores the structure of rebuses as visual riddles, connecting them historically. Part history book, part puzzle book, The Curious History of the Riddle is fully illustrated with over 200 riddles interspersed throughout the text for solving.

Sought, the Sphinx seems everywhere, whether the guardian of the pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau or the beautiful man-eater with a deadly riddle, to be approached with awful caution. The Sphinx, that icon painted, sculpted, engraved, and exalted in poetry, fiction, and music, so impressed the philosopher Hegel that he pronounced the creature “the symbol of the symbolic itself.” With a wealth of illustrations, Book of the Sphinx confirms Hegel's lofty judgment, finding the Sphinx everywhere: in tragedies, paintings, opera, murder mysteries, brothels, bars, and advertisements. Pursuing the Sphinx through kaleidoscopic sightings and encyclopedic observations, Willis Goth Regier plumbs the symbol's mysteries, conducting the reader down ever more perplexing and intriguing paths. Wonderfully readable, his highly idiosyncratic tour of the ages and the arts leads at last to a conception of the Sphinx that embraces nothing less than all that is unknowable—proving once again that confronting a Sphinx is one of the most dangerous and exhilarating adventures of the imagination.