Elizabeth Peters

Elizabeth Peters is a pen name of Barbara Mertz (1927–2013), an American author who earned a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Writing as Peters, she is best known for the Amelia Peabody mystery series, beginning with Crocodile on the Sandbank, and she also published the romance Love of the Egoist under that name. Under the name Barbara Michaels she wrote primarily gothic and supernatural thrillers, and in the 1960s she published two books on ancient Egypt, Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs and Red Land, Black Land.