While Pearl Harbor might turn out to be the summer biggest blockbuster film, The Mummy Returns, continues to fill theaters after its record-breaking $68.1 million opening weekend, and the new Hyperion imprint Theia is touting its just released The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead by Heather Pringle. The title refers to the Third World Congress on Mummy Studies held in Arica, Chile. As fantastical as a Mummy Congress might sound, this is a work of nonfiction.

Pringle's style is indeed literary, which is what the Theia imprint is all about, although her subject matter falls more into Stephen King territory. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Ariz., said fans of Kathy Reichs's and Elizabeth Peters's mysteries and science-related titles will like this book. "I never discount reader's fascination with books like Dava Sobel's Longitude—history focused on science and discovery—and on books that lead us through the past to understand the present and wonder about the future," she explained. The Mummy Congress covers every type of preserved dead, from classic bandage-wrapped Egyptian specimens to modern examples like the body of Lenin (whose brother reportedly remarked that death and embalming had improved his looks). The Congress on Mummy Studies is held in Arcia, Chile, because as one of the driest places on earth it offers ideal conditions for human preservation. Literally hundreds of mummified bodies have been unearthed there.

Apparently, Mummies can pop up in odder places than the Chilean desert, practically in one's backyard. As a child, Britton Trice, owner of the Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, said he heard there were mummies on the Tulane University campus, and The Mummy Congress confirms that rumor. The Egyptian mummies were stored in a room under the bleachers in the university's stadium, where, as Pringle writes, they "inadvertently attended three Super Bowls." Trice observed: "That local interest gives us a little selling point."

Also, mummies have a universal appeal. After editing The Mummy Congress Hyperion vice-president and editor-in-chief Will Schwalbe is starting to see mummies closer to home. "Running off to the gym and putting ourselves on diets is essentially mummifying our flesh while we're alive," he said.

With a first printing of 30,000, Hyperion is marketing The Mummy Congress in traditional ways and is also taking advantage of relevant Web sites like www.mummytombs.com. The current issue of Discover magazine has first serial, and on June 18 Pringle begins a national tour. The Vancouver-based Pringle, author of In Search of Ancient North America and numerous archaeology articles for magazines like Science and National Geographic Traveler, will also conduct slide-show presentations at the San Diego Museum of Man and the Brooklyn Museum.

Though expert enough to lecture seriously about mummies, Pringle enjoys their pop culture side as well. For instance, she lined up to see The Mummy Returns on opening day, and she theorized that the classic mummy movie plot still fascinates because of the elusive nature of everlasting life. "When it comes to space travel or genetic engineering, science is on the verge of achieving things we used to see only in movies, but science is nowhere near to attaining immortality," said Pringle. And how did the mummy authority rate the accuracy of this wildly successful film? "Let's just say it was a fun movie and leave it at that," she teased.