Ray Stickle

Gearing up for summer reading. I have quite a stack of books begging for attention. These titles are high on the list.

I'm hoping to make it to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Canada, and catch Antony and Cleopatra. I don't know if Shakespeare qualifies as beach reading material, but nothing like a heavy dose of humanity while looking at the waves, right? There are other classics on the list as well, including Henrik Ibsen and Kurt Vonnegut. I'm also going to hit some favorite genres hard.NOS4A2 and Mr. Mercedes will give me my King family fill. I'd like to see if I can finally finish Lord of Chaos and Quicksilver--I've been working on both for a long time now! I'm getting close to being caught up with Robert Crais.

This will be a dynamic list--with additions and books that don't get read. Writing will take quite a bit of my time as I'll be finishing up revisions on the sequel to Ruin's Entrance and maybe, just maybe, the sequel to The Footnotes. And there's also the World Cup, a trip to Charleston, and other adventures as yet unknown. Can it be June yet?

The Ruin's Wasteful Entrance giveaway ends May 30th, so there's still time to enter! Ruin's Wasteful Entrance is the first novel in the Marius Besshaven series.

House of Atreus, meet the House of Frost. The rambling estate in the wooded hills of southern Ohio hides secrets. Murder begetting murder. Wickedness leading to more wickedness. It’s a story as old as time itself.

Cast into this world after the death of his parents, young Marius Besshaven seeks the truth about his mother’s past, about his own identity. Cryptic messages in unlikely places, the fractured memories of unreliable survivors, the haunting voices of ghosts--from these elements Marius will have to piece together his family’s history. And what will become of him? Will he find ruin, like so many who came before him? Will he find resolution? Or will the curse continue?

From loudspeaker-muted atrocities on the killing fields of Nazi-occupied Poland to lavender-scented murder in the estate’s hidden garden, the tragedies of the past touch the lives of the present and no one will ever be the same.

Stay tuned for news on the sequel, due out early in the fall of 2014.