The Mussorgsky Riddle

Psychic Mira Tejedor possesses unique talents that enable her to find anything and anyone, but now she must find a comatose boy wandering lost inside the labyrinth of his own mind. Thirteen-year-old Anthony Faircloth hasn't spoken a word in almost a month and with each passing day, his near catatonic state worsens. No doctor, test, or scan can tell Anthony's distraught mother what has happened to her already troubled son. In desperation, she turns to Mira for answers, hoping her unique abilities might succeed where science has failed. At their first encounter, Mira is pulled into Anthony's mind and finds the child's psyche shattered into the various movements of Modest Mussorgsky's classical music suite, Pictures at an Exhibition. As she navigates this magical dreamscape drawn from Anthony's twin loves of Russian composers and classical mythology, Mira must contend with gnomes, troubadours, and witches in her search for the truth behind Anthony's mysterious malady. The real world, however, holds its own dangers. The onset of Anthony's condition coincides with the disappearance of his older brother's girlfriend, a missing persons case that threatens to tear the city apart. Mira discovers that in order to save Anthony, she will have to catch a murderer who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets contained in Anthony's unique mind from ever seeing the light.

About the Author

Darin Kennedy, born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. After completing family medicine residency in the mountains of Virginia, he served eight years as a United States Army physician and wrote his first novel in the sands of northern Iraq.His novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle, was born from a fusion of two of his lifelong loves: classical music and world mythology - a love letter to Mussorgsky's magnum opus, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Rimsky-Korsakov's masterpiece, Scheherazade. The Stravinsky Intrigue continues those same themes while exploring Stravinsky's first three ballets and his Fugue & Fable series culminates in The Tchaikovsky Finale, which takes us through the famous ballets of Tchaikovsky with a finale accompanied by the cannons of the 1812 Overture. The first two novels in his The Pawn Stratagem contemporary fantasy series, Pawn's Gambit and Queen's Peril, combine contemporary fantasy with the ancient game of chess. He has thus far published twenty-plus short stories in various anthologies and magazines to include Pill Hill Press, Blood Bound Books, Wicked East Press, Dark Oak Press, Emby Press, Dark Hall Press, White Cart Publications, Curiosity Quills Press, Elder Signs Press, Falstaff Books, Wilder Publications, and a rare piece of fiction in the October 2012 issue of Chess Life Magazine. The best, particularly those about a certain Necromancer for Hire, are collected for your reading pleasure under Darin's imprint, 64Square Publishing.Doctor by day and novelist by night, he writes and practices medicine in Charlotte, NC. When not engaged in either of the above activities, he has been known to strum the guitar, enjoy a bite of sushi, and rumor has it he even sleeps on occasion. Find him online at darinkennedy.com.

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