SunlessNick

Very much so! And the historical/useful/look to the future notes that come up are great for making Arkham a living town. (For those yet to read it, "Useful" refers to a place's potential for contacts and clues, while "Look to the future" mentions how places or people will figure into Lovecraft's stories, but also how the next decade might affect them in mundane terms - not all places have them, but plenty do).

She has a couple of advantages over Shrewsbury. Her most recent departure from Arkham is only a year or so ago, compared to thirteen years for Shrewsbury in Unveiled's 1928, making it more likely that her house is still intact - and there's someone cited as likely to know where she was planning to go. What Mythos she was into, and the nature of the notes she left behind at the Miskatonic, is left undefined, and thus easy to customise. Sure, you could change all that stuff with Shrewsbury, but a character with it all built in is better.

One change I like is that Greg the Monster (a cannibal homeless guy) now comes in two options, one of which is a misunderstood innocent and subject of cruel rumours.

I think it would better to focus on one area in particular. Egypt is the best option, because it has the biggest presence in the Mythos, and can be tied into other products (also, when it comes to Mesopotamia, there are a couple of superb Babylon games out there already).

That is so handy to have.

Is the scenario itself expanded, or much the same?

If you're setting up for Horror on the Orient Express, you should probably start with Europe, so they have contacts there to build on. (Assuming they are playing the same investigators).

I really liked the Well of All Fear!

I would think so.

I recently read Al-Azif Unearthed from Miskatonic Repository, where the investigators are sent to verify and acquire an ancient scroll that's potentially a source text for the original Al-Azif* - in the scenario as written, they're academics, or at least their employer is - but it could easily be a family project as well. * It appears to the be the first in a series about the Necronomicon's origins, but only the first part has been published yet.

Does the "Arkham Unveiled" in the bottom left corner imply this book will have companions?

The quoted passage in the story also describes the process as a way to call back the dead - or the "shape of any dead ancestor" - "without any criminal neccromancy." So not everyone who used this considered it the same thing as necromancy. And possibly didn't consider the resurrectee to be the same entity as the living original, rather than a sort of duplicate.

I haven't yet, but I would like to.

My suggestion would be that the initial reading reveals the presence of most or all spells the book contains, but learning to cast them would take more comprehensive study, unless you've happened to come across a book designed for teaching spells. (Of the main ones listed in the core, only True Magick might possibly a candidate for that). That's how it works by default, for the same reason that the Cthulhu Mythos skill still works even if none of the books you've read would logically mention the entity at hand. The default framing of the skill is insight rather than raw information. I sometimes have my own issues with that framing, but the only way round it would be have multiple Mythos skills and rate books by what they provide in each - it might be worth doing, but it'll be a lot of bookkeeping.

I'm digging the number of MR books for the Regency that have come out. It's clearly a resonant vein.