We all owe Joan Hess an enormous debt of gratitude for the years of work she devoted to this undertaking, persevering through unimagined difficulties and prioritizing this work over all else during that time period. Greater friendship one could not imagine.

For many years, Elizabeth Peters (and her alter ego, Barbara Mertz) relied on the calm, constant, and utterly reliable guidance of her agent, Dominick Abel, who also became a cherished friend and ally. As they always have shared a dislike of maudlin sentiment, we won’t elaborate further. Even a skilled editor like Ms. Peters needed help with her manuscripts—although she would have told you that she didn’t suffer foolish edits gladly; thus it is a real testament to the skill of her longtime editor, Jennifer Brehl, that Ms. Peters approved of (and even privately admitted to enjoying!) the work they did together.

Ms. Peters accumulated a group of other friends over many years in the book business, including fellow authors, who carried one another through highs and lows. Their exploits at various conventions (including their own “GroucherCon”) and elsewhere probably are best left undescribed. Let us just say that they certainly could hold their own with Amelia when it came to beverages of genial and other types—and that their commentaries shared with Emerson a literate, if at times intemperate, character. And that leads us also to Ms. Peter’s comrades-in-arms within Egyptology and allied fields, similarly sturdy companions through all kinds of adventures. The prefaces of previous Amelia volumes are filled with specific acknowledgments of individual scholars and sources—but they name only a small swath of the colleagues she counted as friends.

We hope she would forgive us for saying that her friendly and warm embrace extended broadly across family and friends, from nearby neighbors to far-flung pen pals—despite her attempts to pass as a curmudgeon. We miss her wicked sense of humor, her warmth, her intense curiosity, and the enthusiasm she used to create a sense of adventure in even the most mundane of settings.

And finally, we are certain that Ms. Peters would want to thank her and Amelia’s “dear readers” for decades of shared enjoyment in this adventure. As many readers know, for some years now the books in this series have been going back in time to fill in missing seasons in the saga. The Painted Queen does just this, also. The final chapter of the tale chronologically was published some years ago, in The Tomb of the Golden Bird, allowing Amelia and Emerson to exit triumphantly, on their own terms. And now we come to the moment when we must allow Amelia’s very dedicated editor to depart in the same fashion.