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Ray Palen

Biography

Ray Palen


Ray Palen is an award-winning actor, drama teacher, and former executive producer/director for 15+ years of a highly successful regional theatre group that is still based on Long Island. Additionally, he is a published playwright with several short plays being registered with the Writers Guild of America. One of his short plays that featured his fictional hero, Sherlock Holmes, won first prize in a Holmes short play contest.

Ray's go-to pastime, however, has been reading. He has been an avid reader and writer throughout his life --- reading at least three books per week for as long as he can remember (a love of reading and lifelong insomnia being the dual cause of this). His book collection numbers in the thousands, and he prides himself on his rare and signed first editions. Ray has been reviewing books, movies and theatre for decades with several online and print publications.

In 2015, Ray relocated from the New York City area, where he lived his entire life, to Central Florida for a job opportunity with Walt Disney World. He also satisfied his burning itch to act again when he starred as the psychopath Harry Roat Jr. in a production of Terrence Knott's "Wait Until Dark," which was performed at Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort. Recently, Ray has been acting at a popular theatre in Central Florida where he had starring roles in both "And Then There Were None" by Dame Agatha Christie and "Dial 'M' for Murder" by Terrence Knott. Ironically, he was cast in both plays as the villain --- which he plays off as both preferring more complex, villainous roles and relishing the opportunity to show off his native British accent! Currently he works as a Customer Operations Supervisor for the sports-tech entertainment company FanDuel.

His greatest personal production to date is his beautiful daughter, Anna, who is now seven and loves growing up in the shadow of Cinderella Castle. She already has a fond appreciation for books and reading! Ray resides just 20 minutes outside of Walt Disney World in Clermont, FL, with his wife Debbie, his little Princess Anna, and three cats (Mickey, Rory and Lorelei). There is a very good possibility that he is probably reading a novel right now. Cheers!

Ray Palen

Reviews by Ray Palen

by Joyce Carol Oates - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Short Stories, Suspense, Thriller

In THE FRENZY, Joyce Carol Oates plunges us into the lives of her characters at moments of crisis and confusion, when much of what they understand about themselves and those they love comes undone. A young woman on a supposedly romantic weekend trip to Cape May, New Jersey, turns the tables on her older, married lover. A freak bicycle accident on a bridge haunts one family for decades. A girl jealous of her popular cousin discovers she is the lucky one. A widow waits at her riverside house for her dead husband's return. A young man hiking in the woods comes upon a couple in a heated, possibly violent argument. Should he intervene?

by Catherine Steadman - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Reeling from a very recent divorce, Frankie has moved into a glamorous London neighborhood. This is a new chapter in her life. She’s decided to put down roots with her beautiful Persian cat, Blue. But little doubts about her perfect new life start to grow, and when Blue returns one night from slipping into places he shouldn’t, Frankie’s concerns solidify. Two words are roughly scratched into his collar: help me. Unsettled and unwilling to ignore the incident, Frankie roots out an old unused “cat cam” collar. What slowly begins as a voyeuristic fascination with her neighbors and the secrets they’re hiding soon turns into a perilous quest for the truth that threatens to bring untold terrors to her doorstep.

by Rob Hart - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing. Her fellow Assassins Anonymous members --- Mark, Astrid and Booker --- offer to watch her baby girl, Lucia, while she's gone. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor. She wants him to kill Astrid. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend…and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do. Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police as they try to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras --- all without killing anyone.

by Lisa Jewell - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate when a small white terrier appears, alone and with no sign of the teenage girl he’d been staying with nearby. When the teenager is reported missing, Jane offers to return the dog to his registered owner, hours away in London. Arriving at a run-down house called Thornwood in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead, she is immediately on alert --- because Jane has a dark history with this house. The man who answers the door is not the man Jane remembers from her past. Then, through the window of the house, Jane catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman. Conjuring her memories from 25 years ago, Jane knows this unsettling house holds the key --- to the missing teenager, to her own traumatic story, and to the dark secrets of the past.

by Kimberly McCreight - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Gretchen Falk, a Park Avenue sophisticate born into great wealth and blessed with a storybook marriage, tried to convince her devoted husband, Richard, not to join his old college friends on an expedition to the imposing peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Frankie Callahan’s dream of artistic success is within reach, with her career-making exhibition at a celebrated New York gallery only weeks away. To mark this new beginning, she is going to climb Kilimanjaro, but she certainly didn’t count on meeting anyone like Richard Falk. By the time they descend, they have lost more than they ever could have imagined. Now, less than two weeks after their return to New York, Frankie’s East Village loft is a blood-soaked crime scene, and Richard has been charged with her murder.

by Brad Thor - Fiction, Political Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

As global assistance pours into Thailand --- including the FBI’s famed Evidence Response Team --- the president of the United States quietly prepares a plan B: Scot Harvath, America’s top spy, trained to operate outside the law and probe the dark corners others can’t…or won’t. But the bomber Harvath is pursuing isn’t a terrorist. He’s something far more dangerous --- one of ours. Meanwhile, in Washington, a former United States Marine is being hunted, and he has no idea why. Desperate for answers, he turns to the one person he still trusts --- his ex-fiancée, a rising star in the White House. But she isn’t sure she can trust him. As Harvath closes in on the bomber, a devastating truth begins to emerge.

by John Connolly - Fiction, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

In a darkly brilliant thriller set in Maine’s rural Kennebec River Valley, the body of a young runaway from a “troubled teens” school has been found in the water, seemingly drowned, while a teenage girl has gone missing, believed dead. Now it is up to one man, private investigator Charlie Parker, to find the connection, and bring two evils --- one new and one ancient --- to an end.

by Sarah Vaughan - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday --- and her latest #1 bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs. But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century. Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built...With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email --- and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career. But when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?

by CJ Leede - Fiction, Horror, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it's happening again. Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they've allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue. Now Daniel will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along --- before he and the people he loves become the next victims.

by Maggie O'Farrell - Fiction, Historical Fiction

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás? And how is Liam, who is only 10, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?