Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 21

“Questioning Your Sanity” by Michael J. Ritchie (2020)

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A short entry this week to draw attention to the fact that Ive got another book out! Ive stepped aside from fiction for a while, though, and can now share my brand new quiz book, Questioning Your Sanity, which Ive gone ahead and self-published via Amazon.

The book has come about after I started hosting a Zoom quiz during the first lockdown, as many of us did. Unlike many, however, mine lingered and now I reach December having asked over 1700 questions. I...

“The Moving Toyshop” by Edmund Crispin (1946)

“Richard Cadogan raised his revolver, took careful aim and pulled the trigger.”

A couple of months back, I read a book about authors and books that were once popular but had been forgotten by time, falling out of print or fashion. As if I didn’t have enough to read already, I vowed to track down as many of the ones that interested me as possible. This book, The Moving Toyshop, is one of them.

Struggling poet Richard Cadogan has just arrived in Oxford for what he hopes will be a relaxing holida...

“Rotherweird” by Andrew Caldecott (2017)

“One for sorrow: Mary Tudor, a magpie queen – dress black, face chill white, pearls hanging in her hair like teardrops – stands in the pose of a woman with child, her right palm flat across her swollen belly.”

 

In the sixteenth century, twelve children with superb intellectual gifts were born. Some felt they were saviours, others the spawn of the devil himself. Under the order of the queen, they were banished to the town of Rotherweird, which was in turn cut off from the rest of England. Now, f...

“Trouble With Lichen” by John Wyndham (1960)

“The farewell was beautiful.”

John Wyndham is something of a master of the creepy and the dystopian, whether dealing with sentient plants or alien children. I thought it was time to give him another go.

Two scientists have been working on a rare species of lichen, hoping to find some antibacterial properties in it that will help medical science. However, they both uncover something else in its chemistry instead: it can slow down the aging process. Deciding not to tell the other, each begins to p...

“Half A World Away” by Mike Gayle (2019)

“I’m belting out ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ at the top of my lungs as I pull up in front of the house.”

I’ve been reading Mike Gayle’s stuff for a long time, and he remains one of my favourite writers. Not one to take on massive worldbuilding projects or fill his stories with aliens or witches, Gayle instead deals simply with human relationships and matters pertaining to friendship, family and romance. Once again, he steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the park.

Kerry Hayes has gro...

“The Penguin Killer” by Ste Sharp (2020)

“I could tell he was a copper by the way he leaned on my desk.”

Wait, come back! I haven’t picked up a book about how to murder Antarctic birds! In this case, the penguin of the title is the publishing house. Ste Sharp has used their distinctive covers to bring this murder mystery to life.

It’s the summer of 1995, the height of Britpop, and while Blur and Oasis battle it out in the charts for the number one spot, twenty-one-year-old Luke Redfern is running his grandfather’s second hand bookshop ...

“Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons (1932)

“The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged…”

As a native Sussexian, I have a deep fondness for the county. Sussex, historically, has always seemed a slightly different place to the rest of England, although these differences have certainly become less pronounced in recent years. Nonetheless, the unofficial county motto remains “We wunt be druv“, and it’s a pleasure to meet some characters, however scruffy, who live up to the axiom.

Flora Post...

“The Pisces” by Melissa Broder (2018)

“I was no longer lonely but I was.”

Was I almost exclusively attracted to this book because I’m a Piscean? Maybe. But then did the blurb really convince me that this sounded like something unusual that I needed to read? You bet. This is, The Pisces.

Lucy has just gone through a very bad break up, the result of which is that she has moved into her sister’s empty house in Venice Beach and is having to attend group therapy to deal with the fallout. Pining for Jamie but determined to prove to hersel...

“Time Out Of Joint” by Philip K. Dick (1959)

“From the cold-storage locker at the rear of the store, Victor Nielson wheeled a cart of winter potatoes to the vegetable section of the produce department.”

Have you ever felt like you’re being watched? Doesn’t everyone’s ego, once in a while, make them worry that everything around them isn’t real, and that for some reason you can’t begin to fathom, you’re not in on the joke? What is that were really the case?

It’s 1959 and Ragle Gumm is locally famous because he makes his living by entering a ...

“The Book Of Forgotten Authors” by Christopher Fowler (2017)

“Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder.”

Which 1897 supernatural romantic novel featured shapeshifting powers, hypnotic commands and is told from several viewpoints? No, not Dracula. This is The Beetle by Richard Marsh, which far outsold Stoker’s vampiric novel. Published in the same year and, at the time, the bestseller, it seems unfathomable now that this isn’t a household title. This is just one of the one hundred authors in Christopher Fowler’s outstanding book, all of whom were incred...