New Book From Frank Dello Stritto

[Anthony Caranci]

Hello Monster Lovers,
I wanted to share some good news with you.
Author/Historian Frank Dello Stritto has written a new book. I have been serving as one of the proofreaders, and as one who offers their two cents (provided it's still worth two cents).
The book is titled The Passion Of The Mummy. Frank has woven together all of the Hammer Mummy films along with the Universal films and has created a fantastic tale.

My words can't do it enough justice, so I'll let Frank's words do the talking.  Frank posted this on his Facebook page:

   

A sixth book is now in preparation, THE PASSION OF THE MUMMY. I am hoping to have it in print in early 2021, and to premiere it at the June 2021 Monster Bash in Cranberry, Pennsylvania. This book completes my trilogy of novels based on the classic movie monsters. The first is A WEREWOLF REMEMBERS (“starring” The Wolf Man, Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster, among others), and the second is CARL DENHAM’S GIANT MONSTERS (with King Kong, Godzilla and many other memorable beasts from the movies). As with my earlier books, THE PASSION OF THE MUMMY brings together a lot of movie mummies and tales of ancient Egypt together, but the narrative is built around Kharis, who appears in four Universal movies made between 1940 and 1944.
As of the classic monsters, Kharis is the most tragic. A prince of Egypt, he committed sacrilege by attempting to bring his beloved Ananka back from the dead. Pharaoh sentenced him to be mummified alive, and become the undead protector of Ananka’s tomb. For 3,000 years, Kharis murdered anyone who ventured to the Hill of the Seven Jackals. A team of archaeologists penetrates the tomb, and brings Ananka and her treasures to New York while leaving Kharis and his guardian priest for dead. But they survive, and Kharis is launched on a mission first of revenge, and then of recovering Ananka’s mummy. His odyssey brings him and a series of priests to New York, Massachusetts, and somewhere deep in the American South. The saga closes with Kharis’ and Ananka’s mummies on display in the Scripps Museum. 
Many years later, while on a class trip to the Scripps, a nine year-old boy stands before Kharis, and experiences weird communion with him. He can read Kharis’ memories. Over the next 20 years, he again and again sees the mummy, and comes to know his entire life. That psychic link is noticed by the priests of the Cult of Karnak-Arkham, who still discretely tend to Kharis—for Kharis knows a secret that the Cult desperately seeks. They lure the now young man into a hidden world of eternal evil and undead beings.
No sub-genre of monster movies makes more explicit the time frames of its stories than mummy movies. Rare that a monster movie provides the year of its plot. For the first three of Hammer’s four mummy movies, Universal’s first mummy movie (with Im-ho-tep) and first Kharis movie, the viewer knows exactly when the action is occurring. Even one-off films from independent studios—1933’s THE GHOUL and 1957’s PHARAOH’S CURSE—tell us when the plot takes place. Thus a timeline of living mummies in the modern world is easy to construct.
The exception is the Kharis series, which as the saga progresses becomes a chronicler’s nightmare. I handle that with only a little sleight of hand. Those conversant in the films will appreciate the challenge.
A subtle theme runs through not only many mummy movies, but also ancient Egypt’s one appearance on THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1964’s “Queen of the Nile” episode) and the movies’ one vampire of Egyptian origin (1983’s THE HUNGER). The immortal men are tragic, the immortal woman are triumphant, and demonic, which becomes a central idea in THE PASSION OF THE MUMMY. For every time the tale’s narrator faces Kharis, behind him is the mummy of Ananka, patiently waiting for her chance to escape the grave.
 
The dust jacket cover below is George Chastain, who also did the art for my previous two novels.

[geezer butler]

very cool AC. Thanks for posting.

[Sir Masksalot]

Author/Historian Frank Dello Stritto has written a new book titled The Passion Of The Mummy.

Well that's quite a striking cover. For disciples like me who never got enough of those classic Mummy movies, this might just be the book to have.