Kit's journey through the desert from Cairo to Siwa

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"I don't want to get married. Why should I have some man telling me what to do?" I asked

"No one wants a blue-stocking like you. You'll end up a hairy old spinster," Waldo whispered to me quietly, so our governess wouldn't hear.

"Better than a fathead like you," I flashed back. I knew it was a lame reply but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.

 [Extracted from the Mummy Snatcher of Memphis - Book One of the Kit Salter Adventures]

Kit Salter, a girl with attitude, is the star of a new series of Victorian era adventures. Described as a cross between 'Indiana Jones and Flashman' these books will go to the furthest outposts of the British empire - and beyond. Kit and her gang of friends travel from the barren Egyptian desert to the icy peaks of the Himalayas - seizing every chance for mayhem and  mischief that comes their way.

Kit is the prime mover of the series, ably abetted by her gang of friends. These are the handsome blonde American Waldo, Isaac, the inventor and ever ready with a note of caution - the gentle  Rachel.

Kit's derring-do character dismays her father, a museum curator based in Oxford. He wishes she would work on her accomplishments - singing, piano, sewing - not to mention her atrocious manners. Luckily Professor Salter is too absent-minded to successfully play the stern father.

We first meet Kit in The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis. When the friends  peek at a famed mummy in a museum chamber, they are shocked to discover rattles and moans coming from the box ...Inside is an Egyptian stowaway, determined to return a looted scarab and save his village. When the mummy is stolen too, the ensuing adventures puts the children fast on the heels of a villainous East End mob, and right into the heart of the Western Desert. But as the story climaxes in a temple, the villains and Kit find they have underestimated a stronger force - the terrible power of ancient Egypt.

With a wonderfully spirited heroine and a cast of batty aunts, French adventurers and music hall villains, this is a fabulous first book. It brings to life the the world of Victorian explorers, inventors and empire builders - the colonisers and the colonised.

Over the course of the next three books, Kit and her friends will travel to the very outposts of the British empire. In the Maharajah's Monkey they hunt for soma, the elusive elixir of immortality, on the slopes of the Himalayas. In later books they solve the mystery of the Marie Celeste among pirates on the high seas, and track Inuit warriors through the Arctic wastes. They will battle to outwit their arch rivals: the ghastly Baker Brothers, collectors linked with slavery and opium running.

Kit's route aboard The Poonah from England to Egypt

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What would an unmarried Victorian lady under the age of 30 not do?

 A Use a man's Christian name. Eg call their friend Thomas, Thomas.

B: Bare their ankles.

C: Go out by themselves to the shops.

E: Study to be a doctor.

F: Drink vinegar

 Answer: All of them are big no-nos, except drinking plain vinegar which was thought to make ladies look paler and more fragile...