The Faulkner County Library welcomes author Jay Ruud for a reading from his latest Merlin Mystery novel, Lost in the Quagmire, on Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 7:00 PM.
Lost in the Quagmire, the fourth novel in the Merlin Mystery series, explores the quest for the Holy Grail. A mania seizes the Knights of the Round Table with the arrival of Sir Galahad who has a vision of the Holy Grail at Pentecost. They all rush off on a quest to find the relic, but run into disaster from the outset. When knight after knight turns up dead or wounded, Gildas and Merlin begin to suspect some sinister force behind the madness. Could it be a conspiracy to destroy Arthur and his reign? They being their own quest: to find out who or what is behind the deaths. Could it be Arthur’s mysterious sister, Morgan la Fay? Or Mordred, Arthur’s bastard son? Gildas is forced to prove his worth as a knight with nothing less than the lives of Merlin and his master Sir Gareth at stake.
“Jay Ruud’s Merlin may or may not be a wizard, but the author certainly is, with his ability to infuse new energy into the well-loved mythical world of Arthur, once and future King. An imaginatively conjured tale, enlivened by the peripheral point of view of its narrator, Gildas, a young man coming of age in a time of legend. Enchanting!”
—Kyran Pittman, New York Times best-selling author of Planting Dandelions
Jay Ruud is a retired former Professor and Chair of the English department at the University of Central Arkansas. In addition to scholarly books on Chaucer, Dante, and Tolkien, and an Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature, he has published three previous novels in the Merlin Mysteries series: Fatal Feast(2015), The Knight’s Riddle(2016), and The Bleak and Empty Sea(2017). The current release, Lost in the Quagmire, is the fourth novel in that series. Jay is married to fellow novelist Stacey Margaret Jones, and has two adult children, four grandchildren, and four dogs. He taught at UCA for 13 years, prior to which he was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He has a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
All library events are free and open to the public.
For more information, call the library at 501-327-7482 or email nancy@fcl.org.
