Wellington Books and Eliza D. Braun arrive in Cairo, Egypt, sent from Ministry headquarters on an archival audit. What Wellington hopes will be a stay in the cradle of civilization and a break from the bitter winter of England instead looks to be a brief visit on account of Eliza's poor attitude and the disdain of the area field director, Marcus Donahue.
The plans for an uneventful collection of case documents and artefacts are soon shattered by a massacre that that can only be described by the visiting archivists as peculiar.

Tales from the Archives are short stories set in the world of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. They explore events mentioned in the novels, characters seen and unseen and may include novel teasers of things to come.