The Ice Sculptress

by Lee Perry

Deep in the forests of Estes Park, Colorado, stands the mansion that sculpturist Maya Reese inherited from her father. Now it is where she keeps her life's work safe from prying eyes. Inside the industrial freezer in her basement are several works of ice sculpture, each crimson red and carved in the shape of one of the many hikers and misfits she's abducted from lonely mountain roads and abandoned trailheads. But her final addition to the collection proves to be more of a problem than she thought.

The homeless man chained in her cellar is not what he appears. Under the long beard and dirty clothes is a former law student and poet suffering from severe schizophrenia. Can she make him the perfect model for her penultimate project? The one that will finalize her life's work? Or will he awaken a deep fear inside of her, a fear connected to her dead father and the giant house he shut himself in for almost twenty years?

She must decide fast. Suspicion is mounting. Time is running out. And the ghosts of the past are reawakening.

249 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 9, 2025

About the author

Lee Perry was born in 1984 in Pembury, Kent. His youth was spent growing up in the sleepy villages of Sussex where he went to school. An encounter with Second World War veterans sparked not only lasting friendships, but an interest in History and in particular Military History. He served a brief period of time with the Territorial Army and is now an author and teacher in Tonbridge, Kent where he lives with his family. He is a regular visitor to France, in particularly Normandy and the Lot region of South West France where his mother and father live.

Desert Rose is his first published novel, inspired by the veteran friends he had made in the past and his family. The novel is set in both the south coast of Sussex England and the empty desert of North Africa during World war two. The story follows the story of John Baker who is leading his company of soldiers through the inferno of desert warfare and his sister Sophie who has been left to grow up alone. Whilst apart they discover much about each other, secrets are revealed that only the desert could have provided.