An enthralling fictional account of Howard Carter's famous search for the tomb of King Tut and the mystery behind the tragic death and disappearance of ancient Egypt's child ruler In ancient times, a boy king occupied the throne in a troubled desert land. His name was Tutankhamun. Both his reign and his life were shockingly brief, and his burial place was unknown--mysteries that would intrigue the inquisitive for centuries to come.   An English archaeologist irresistibly drawn to Egypt and her secrets, Howard Carter arrives in the Middle East in the second decade of the twentieth century to uncover the hidden final resting place of the tragic child pharaoh. But from the outset his search is plagued by misfortune and obstruction--a corrupt and unbending Egyptian bureaucracy, a British lord and patron more interested in profit than in knowledge, and Carter's own inability to connect with his fellow human beings. Still, he will not be deterred from his obsessive hunt for the answer to one of the most astonishing puzzles in the history of the world.   In her magnificent novel Valley of the Kings, Cecelia Holland has created two worlds, brilliantly re-creating Egypt in the 1920s and in the time of Tutankhamun. A stunning tale of determination and discovery, brimming with color, mystery, and life, it confirms her standing as one of the true masters of historical fiction.