The Curse of the Pharaoh's Stone

In 1922 Philadelphia, twelve-year-old Oklahoma Smith has lost his mother and twin brothers to a curse he believes he summoned. To save his older brother from the same fate, Okie struggles to decipher the mysterious writing on the cursed ancient Egyptian artifact he owns. He runs afoul of the Englishman, who will kill to possess the artifact he thinks holds the key to the Elixir of Life. Okie's quest spirals out of control as he fights to save himself and his friend Alexandra from kidnappers, retrieve the stolen artifact, and break the deadly curse on his family.

P.G.K. Hanson has lived in Lebanon, Cyprus, Germany, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Virginia, Massachusetts and New Jersey before settling in Pennsylvania to begin a writing career. P.G.K. has multiple college degrees (in Communications, Chemical Engineering, Political Science, and English), from Chestnut Hill College, Northeastern University, Virginia Tech, Arcadia University and MIT (as well as one crazy semester at Havana University). P.G.K. enjoys traveling, having visited Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Israel, England, Scotland, France, Monaco, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and a few of the smaller islands like St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbados, St. Lucia, and Margarita, as well as touring much of the United States. P.G.K. has 6 children and 4 grandchildren, and, at age 200, is looking forward to launching a successful writing career with The Curse of the Pharaoh's Stone. I spent the first 14 years of my life overseas. I was a member of the founding class of the Hong Kong International School. At 14, my father put me on a plane for the journey from Beirut to New York with the admonition: "Don't lose your brothers and sister." I attended high school in a small southern town where the culture was as foreign every other place. Some of the kids had never been out of the county, never mind the country.
I graduated from VA Tech with a degree in Political Science and went to work with a "beltway bandit" consulting for the US Navy. Turns out I don't have the temperament for the coat and tie, "yes sir/no sir" environment.
When I was waitlisted by the State Department and awaiting my CIA background check, I waited tables at the highest-grossing restaurant in the country. Three years of that taught me a lot more about how to deal with people. I've worked as a sheetrocker, small businessman, restaurant chef and manager, CS response writer, and national insurance salesman.

I'm now retired, living in Bucks county, PA with my wife and two cats in our empty nest. I love the outdoors and that's where you'll usually find me: gardening, grilling, reading, writing or off surf fishing in the Atlantic. I am the author of the novel The Witch of Zal, several short stories, and two genealogy reference books: The Warren Family of Philadelphia Pennsylvania, and their Ancestors and The Campbell Family of New York City, New York, and their Ancestors. I am a chocoholic theater geek, believe libraries are magic, and consider Chincoteague Island my perfect writing retreat. When not writing, I haunt cemeteries and dusty archives in search of long-dead ancestors and pursue my most important work-in-progress, my daughter. For more information on me and my projects, go to www.kerrygans.com. Nationality is an accident of birth. Some yearn for other places, hence Anglo or Francophiles. Some yearn for other times and past ages; I'm not sure how they cope. My parents escaped East-ern Europe ahead of the Nazis and settled in Cuba. My children are American. I am Cuban. I was born and raised there and loved it—the camaraderie, the heated arguments, the ever present mu-sic seeping in through windows open to capture the cooling breezes, the comparsas during Car-naval, the lush greens, the beaches, the nightlife, everything but the stifling heat—more than I knew, when I had to escape the Castro regime.
Coming to America made me understand what my parents went through in a strange land with strange customs and a strange language. But America, home for most of my life, offers much to love. At times I wonder what if I'd been born here. I live next to an enormous new high school and I'm in awe of all it offers; endless sports fields and learning facilities. I did attend great schools in the USA: Northeastern University and MIT, where I earned a BS and an SM in Chem-ical Engineering. Afterwards I worked for many years, doing research for a chemical company, where I rose to an executive position. As a teen in Cuba I wrote, and as a Northeastern freshman I won English writing honors, even though I barely spoke the language. But writing, I thought, was something I'd lost along with the Cuba I left behind, until a few years ago, when the need to write made me leave my job and rededicate myself to this new and happy craft.