Geoffrey McSkimming (born 1 January 1962) is an Australian children's novelist and poet. He is the author of the 20 volume Cairo Jim chronicles and Jocelyn Osgood jaunts and the Phyllis Wong series of mystery novels. He has also published three volumes of poetry.
McSkimming was born in Sydney, Australia. To write his Cairo Jim stories, he travelled to Egypt, Peru, Tanzania (including Zanzibar), Greece, Mexico, Turkey, Italy and Singapore and other locations. He is much in demand for author talks, and appears with his wife, the magician Sue-Anne Webster, to promote the Phyllis Wong mysteries series.
Geoffrey McSkimming has published more than seventy short stories in magazines and has contributed verse to various poetry anthologies. He narrated the Cairo Jim chronicles as audio books for Bolinda Publishing. The audio version of his book of verse, Ogre in a Toga and Other Perverse Verses, was shortlisted in the Audie Awards (US) in 2008. He wrote five character tours which were performed in the galleries at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Australia, from 2000 through 2013. In June 2006 Geoffrey McSkimming undertook an author tour of the UK for Walker Books, who released ten titles in the Cairo Jim series in the UK.
Geoffrey McSkimming's 25th novel, Phyllis Wong and the Crumpled Stranger, was published in 2020 by 9 Diamonds Press. He is currently writing the eighth story in the Phyllis Wong Time Detective mysteries series.
All titles in the Cairo Jim chronicles are now e-published by 9 Diamonds Press, as well as new print editions. A completely new Cairo Jim novel, Cairo Jim and the Portal of Peristophanes -- The Return of Cairo Jim, was published in October 2021. Geoffrey McSkimming is an avid collector and reader of first editions of Victorian and Edwardian detective and mystery fiction, with a particular interest in the works of Fergus Hume.
Geoffrey McSkimming is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency, London.
His Cairo Jim and Jocelyn Osgood books have been published in many different languages in Australia, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and New Zealand.
"When Geoffrey McSkimming was a boy he found an old motion-picture projector and a tin containing a dusty home movie in his grandmother's attic. He screened the film and was transfixed by the flickering image of a man in a jaunty pith helmet, baggy Sahara shorts and special desert sun-spectacles. The man had an imposing macaw and a clever looking camel, and Geoffrey Mcskimming was mesmerised by their activities in black-and-white Egypt, Peru, Greece, Mexico, Sumatra, Turkey, Italy and other exotic locations.
Years later he discovered the identities of the trio, and has spent much of his time since then retracing their footsteps, interviewing surviving members of the Old Relics Society, and gradually reconstructing the lost true tales of Cairo Jim, which have become the enormously successful Cairo Jim chronicles." [1]
The Elements of Style is a style guide to writing American English, published in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," "a few matters of form," a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused," and a list of 57 "words often misspelled." Writer and editor E. B. White greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the so-called Strunk & White, which Time recognized in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.
William Anthony Parker White, better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it "Herman W. Mudgett".
George Sutherland Fraser was a Scottish poet, literary critic and academic.
John Birmingham is a British-born Australian author, known for the 1994 memoir He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, the Axis of Time trilogy, and the well-received space opera series, the Cruel Stars trilogy.
Sisters in Crime (SinC) is a writing organization focused on increasing equity and inclusion for women crime writers within the publishing industry. The group has 4,500 members in 60+ regional chapters worldwide, offering networking, advice and support to mystery authors. Members are authors, readers, publishers, agents, booksellers and librarians bound by their affection for the mystery genre and their support of women who write mysteries.
Byron Preiss was an American writer, editor, and publisher. He founded and served as president of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, and later of ibooks Inc. Many of his projects were in the forms of graphic novels, comics, illustrated books, and children's books. Beyond traditional printed books, Preiss frequently embraced emerging technologies, and was recognized as a pioneer in digital publishing and as among the first to publish in such formats as CD-ROM books and ebooks.
Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Thaʿālibī (961–1038), was a writer famous for his anthologies and collections of epigrams. As a writer of prose and verse in his own right, distinction between his and the work of others is sometimes lacking, as was the practice of writers of the time.
Cyclops is an ancient Greek satyr play by Euripides, based closely on an episode from the Odyssey. It would have been the fourth part of a tetralogy presented by Euripides in a dramatic festival in 5th Century BC Athens. The date of its composition is unknown, but it was probably written late in Euripides' career. It is the only complete satyr play extant.
Love Among the Chickens is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published as a book in the United Kingdom in June 1906 by George Newnes, London, and in the United States by Circle Publishing, New York, on 11 May 1909. It had already appeared there as a serial in Circle magazine between September 1908 and March 1909. The English edition was dedicated "to Sir Bargrave and Lady Deane"; the Rt Hon Sir Henry Bargrave Deane QC was a High Court judge and a cousin of Wodehouse's mother.
Cairo Jim is a popular series of children's books by author Geoffrey McSkimming. They have been described as "epic" and "imaginatively written", and compared to the Boy's Own Paper and the works of Agatha Christie.
Mark Clapham is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular relating to Doctor Who and Warhammer 40,000.
Smith's Weekly was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. It was an independent weekly published in Sydney, but read all over Australia.
Some Buried Caesar is a detective novel by American writer Rex Stout, the sixth book featuring his character Nero Wolfe. The story first appeared in abridged form in The American Magazine, under the title "The Red Bull", it was first published as a novel by Farrar & Rinehart in 1939. In 2000 it was included in the list of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Colin Harper is an Irish non-fiction author and composer.
Robbery Under Arms is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888. It was abridged into a single volume in 1889 as part of Macmillan's one-volume Colonial Library series and has not been out of print since.
David Fulmer is an American author, journalist, and filmmaker.
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a mystery fiction novel by the Australian writer Fergus Hume. The book was first published in Australia in 1886. Set in Melbourne, the story focuses on the investigation of a homicide involving a body discovered in a hansom cab, as well as an exploration into the social class divide in the city. The book was successful in Australia, selling 100,000 copies in the first two print runs. It was then published in Britain and the United States, and went on to sell over half a million copies worldwide, outselling the first of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet (1887).
The Iron Druid Chronicles is a series of urban fantasy novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories, written by Kevin Hearne and published by Del Rey Books. All the books, including short stories, have recorded audiobooks narrated by Luke Daniels and Christopher Ragland
"Five Bells" (1939) is a meditative poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. It was originally published as the title poem in the author's collection Five Bells : XX Poems, and later appeared in numerous poetry anthologies. A 2017 study of Australian national poetry anthologies ranked "Five Bells" as the most anthologised poem, appearing in all except one anthology published between 1946 and 2011.
Geoffrey Haydon Manning (1926–2018) was an Australian author and historian. He is known particularly for his books on South Australian placenames; Manning's Place Names of South Australia (1990) is particularly well-known and available online at the State Library of South Australia website. The final illustrated edition of this work was The Place Names Of Our Land: A South Australian Anthology (2009).