This article about Victorian lady adventurers -- or "skirts on camels" is worth reading. It highlights the adventures of Amelia B. Edwards and several other maverick Victorian ladies with a thirst for adventure.

I've republished Edwards' A Thousand Miles up the Nile, her fascinating travel book about Egypt and Egyptology from the 1870s. Edwards was a famous author in her time, and went on to found the Egypt Exploration fund, which exists to this day.

While you'll enjoy reading her book for its own sake, it's made doubly delightful by its tie-in with Elizabeth Peters' Egyptology-themed Amelia Peabody mystery series, whose main character is clearly based on Amelia Edwards! This means that A Thousand Miles up the Nile acts as a must-read sourcebook for fans of this best-selling series.

Link: http://www.nortoncreekpress.com

I've been using my vacation time from my day job at Citrix to catch up on publishing tasks. In particular, I'm getting Karen up to speed on this whole publishing thing, since she's got an immense list of books that ought to be made available again.

We're giving ourselves permission to be eclectic and print what we love, so not all the books will fall into neat categories, but mostly Karen's line is going to be "adventure books." We've got three basic categories in the pipeline (click the highlighted text to take a look at the books):

• Boys' Adventure Books, starting with Percy Keese Fitzhugh's boy scout novels. The first two volumes of his Tom Slade series are already available. (Amazon's listing of Tom Slade #2 is incomplete, but it'll be fine by tomorrow or the next day.)

• Amelia B. Edwards' books on Egyptian travel and Egyptology. If you've read Elizabeth Peters' Amelia P. Emerson mysteries, you'll instantly recognize that Amelia Emerson was based on Amelia Edwards, a redoubtable Victorian novelist, travel writer, and Egyptologist. Her works are charming and informative. I can't praise them enough. A Thousand Miles up the Nile should be live on Amazon and other booksellers in a few days.

• One Survivor, a science fiction novel I wrote years ago but couldn't find a publisher for. Well, having my own publishing company certainly takes care of that problem! Read the sample chapters.

I'm on the look out for more good poultry and country living books to republish, too, of course. My short list includes:

• Animal Breeding by A. L. Hagedoorn. Wonderful book, but I'm not sure how to acquire the rights to it, since this would involve identifying and contacting Dr. Hagedoorn's heirs in Holland.

• Poultry Breeding and Management by James Dryden. I'm mostly trying to nerve myself up to believing that it will sell well enough to pay for the extra processing the photos will require.

• The Henyard by Geoffrey Sykes. Similar rights problems to Hagedoorn.

• Another volume on chicken housing, since this topic holds tremendous interest for people.