I’d bought this book for 20 pence. I’d read the first page and thought this iit pretty good, which was a mistake, because it’s great. I read the start of the book during a hospital appointment and finished 410 pages later. I liked the Social Realism. Ben Creed is actually two writers: Chris Rickaby and Barry Thompson. I’m not sure how that works, but it does. I’m going to read their follow up books set in the same milieu, which is the USSR, one...

Penny’s Pass the Story I’m delighted to introduce our shiny new writing challenge. Our very own Penny4athought will donate $50 to ABCTales if we can finish her story in ten parts. How it works: Penny has posted the first part here and celticman has taken up the baton! https://www.abctales.com/story/penny4athought/pennys-pass-story To be next in line to do a part of the story, you will need to comment under the previous part and it'll be first...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent My editor sent me to Harrogate to find Agatha Christie. This was December 1926, and the woman had been missing for ten days. Her Morris Cowley had been found abandoned at Newlands Corner in Surrey — headlights on, fur coat on the seat, no driver. Over a thousand police officers were searching. Fifteen thousand volunteers were combing the countryside. The Home Secretary was demanding daily updates...

A writer’s job is simple as Satan testing Job. Take everything away and have the protagonist curse god (and die). Nobody much likes happy endings in The Bible or good books generally unless there’s been boils, blood, sweat and tears. Even then, somebody is going to get crucified. Tick list. Ray loses her home. Her husband, Moth has been casually told the good news from a medical specialist that they’ve identified his illness. A terminal,...

A simple way to think about Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story is True Perversion of Justice: The Donald J. Trump Story. In interviews the 47 th United States President between berating those that denied him the Nobel Peace Prize and starting his latest war with Iran finds time to comment on release of the latest batch of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. This is a subject he his intimate and expert knowledge, the kind he claims...

Who are you and what are you? Rosaleen McDonagh’s collection of essays attempts to answer that question. ‘Unsettled’ is the title. The paradox: those she tries to unsettle don’t read books much and certainly don’t read books about ingrained prejudices with words like ‘intersectionality’, racism, ableism, and institutional abuse. Can you be made to care? The answer is no as McDonagh shows again and again. The shame is not hers but ours. But if we...

Hey everyone, Pre-orders are now available for my upcoming novel Family Man. The book will be published next month. If you fancy bagging yourself a copy the book can pre-ordered on Amazon. The cover reveal won't be until next week. Book Synopsis: Adolfo Ali makes his long-awaited return in this fast-moving and unpredictable third outing. Complex anti-hero, Aldo, is the de facto head of Edinburgh’s most powerful crime family. But being a crime...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent ​ I want to be clear about something: I was not on the first plane. The first plane was a Cessna 180 that clipped a telegraph wire over Murchison Falls on January 23, 1954, and dropped Ernest Hemingway, his wife Mary, and their pilot Roy Marsh into crocodile country along the Nile. That was a private charter. A Christmas present from Hemingway to Mary. I was not invited, and given what happened, I...

Philip K. Dick wrote forty-four novels in cheap California apartments while behind on rent. He was classified as a pulp science fiction writer, and almost nobody took him seriously while he was alive. He also kept an eight-thousand-page private journal - his Exegesis - trying to work out whether his mystical experiences were divine or delusional. He never decided. On March 2, 1980, he wrote in that journal that he believed a higher intelligence...

Is forgiveness an excuse for sin? If we continue to sin deliberately after coming to a knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left but only a terrifying fire that will devour the enemies of God. We are insulting the sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross and insulting the Spirit of God. The Bible warns strongly against this. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of God. Hebrews 10:26-31. Forgiveness requires a...