Janet Ryan

Baksheeshed Janet Ryan

Jessie Wilson is an ordinary woman coping with life on her own yet the pressures she faces every day pale into insignificance when she buys a set of Egyptian shabti figures from a junk shop. From the moment she gets them home her world is thrown into chaos as Hathor, Horus, Sobek and Anubis pressgang her into their service. From being an independent and freethinking woman, Jessie finds herself having to act as handmaiden to four guardian shabtis, catering for almost their every whim, but every servant has her limits and even as the gods lay down the rules, she tells them exactly which ones she'll obey!Their mission is simple, to retrieve the soul of a mummy stolen from his tomb in the previous century and now on display in the British Museum. To ensure his souls eternal rest, the shabti's have to transport him to Egypt and return to the afterlife through a celestial door in Luxor Temple. Sounds easy? It would be if one of the gods didn't hate Jessie's guts, if she wasn't being followed by the police who think she's an antiquities smuggler and if she hadn't fallen in love with one of the gods along the way. Will Jessie and her gods make it to Egypt before she's arrested or will her shabti figures be confiscated, the mission fail and the soul be lost for all eternity?Baksheeshed is a book of journeys, the journey of a woman as she travels through her own emotions, the journey of a god as he discovers the pleasure and pain of true love, the journey of a detective as he follows his suspect to Egypt and the journey of a lost soul who touches them all.