Ray Taylor and the Torn and Tattered Treasure Map
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: March 12, 2025
ISBN-13: 9798312815221
Description: Ray Taylor – an average schoolboy from a small town who, to his great disappointment and regret, happens to be below average in height – is growing up with his pediatric nurse mother, and without a father, whom he misses very much. Pestered by the bully Murray and his pals, he is saved from the daily grind of school routine by his love of drawing, something that his sketch-filled notebook and the constant complaints of his teachers attest to. But there is a special secret that he can only entrust to his best friend, retriever Buddy. Yet there is something that beckons him even more than his artwork, and his first, timid infatuation with his classmate Jane – that is the search for infinite treasures.

By a stroke fate, having been detained in the home of a strange elderly neighbor, Ray finds himself in the company of 17th century cutthroats and takes his place as the seventh and, as it so happens, missing member of a crew of pirates. On board of the schooner Celestine, Ray sets off on dangerous and captivating adventures across the seven, in no way resembling each other, distant worlds, in search of the seven glowing magical stones hidden there.

It is these magical stones that, instead of seven keys, open the seven chests that lie undisturbed in a grotto on a mysterious, paradise-like island of Tuki-Tuki, on the bottom of which repose the seven parts of the torn and tattered map of the buried treasures. The legends promise the daredevils, who have reached the grotto, treasures fit not just for a single king, but enough to satisfy the desires of an entire hundred kings. Their way is guided by the dead Bloodthirsty Cook himself, through the pages of his Secret Book. Battling the devils in hell, at cards, bad-mouthing and cursing Captain Archie and his crew, Cook reveals to Archie each new step, but only after Archie undergoes ordeals, on dry land and on the high seas. Crowning all of these is the puzzle of Cook himself. Where should they sail to and where should they search? All the hidden answers would be revealed in The Secret Book, if only all of its pages weren't left entirely blank...