Looking for an inexpensive present for either yourself or for someone who loves cars? Well, look no further.

The Ultimate Unofficial F1 Quiz Book.

A hybrid book for an era of hybrid F1 engines, The Ultimate Unofficial F1 Quiz Book is part quiz book, part history book and all fun.

It starts off like the quiz book it was originally intended to be: there are multiple choice questions for every year of F1 up to and including 2020 plus a further 130 multiple choice questions split into groups of ten. These are followed by 12 list-type questions that will test the knowledge of even the most ardent F1 historian.

But that’s not all. Far from it, in fact. You see, for every multiple choice question there’s a narrative section that tells the story behind that question. This wasn’t part of my original idea (a simple quiz book to entertain F1 fans during lockdown whilst raising money for charity) but ‘project creep’ set in and it grew and grew until it ran to over 50,000 words. Oops!

And to add the icing to the cake, half of my royalties from the book go to charity.

It costs £8 in paperback form and is available from Amazon. There’s also an Ebook version with colour illustrations instead of list-type questions that comes in at £4 – no printing costs to cover, y’see!

The Ultimate Classic Car Quiz Book.

Having finally got off my backside and written one book, another one had to follow. And it did, in the guise of The Ultimate Classic Car Quiz Book.

Like The Ultimate Unofficial F1 Quiz Book, it’s a hybrid quiz/history book, one that offers 150 questions, answers and stories about the cars of yesterday, and the people and culture who helped to shape motoring history.

If you think you knew everything about the world of classic cars then think again!

You’ll find it on Amazon. The price is £8, and a quarter of my royalties from this book go to charity.

Lesser Spotted Classics

For my first book of 2021, I teamed up with Russell J. Wallis (a hugely gifted illustrator with a degree in automotive design) to produce something a little different.

The result is Lesser Spotted Classics, a book that tells the stories of 22 (the cover says 21 but we added another car!) classic cars that are now rarely seen on UK roads.

But there’s more to this one than words: for every car featured, there’s an excellent bespoke sketch by Russell.

And all for the bargain price of £6.50. Well, it must be a bargain because both Auto Express and Classic Retro Modern said so! Get your copy on Amazon.

Again, 25% of royalties go to charity. There’s a theme here…

The Ultimate Classic Car Quiz Book 2

My most recent offering is a second helping of facts, stats and trivia from motoring history in a hybrid quiz/narrative book wrapper.

The format remains the same as its earlier near-namesake but there are a few tweaks to the interior design, courtesy of the aforementioned Mr. Wallis. And there are 130 new questions that will both test and expand your knowledge of classic cars. And did I mention that it’s great fun too?

The price is £8.00 (Russell’s cover illustration is worth that on its own) and you can get your copy from Amazon.

And…you know what I’m going to write here, don’t you? Well, I’ll write it anyway: 25% of the royalties from this book go to charity.

And there you have it. Four carefully crafted books for fans of F1 and/or classic cars. But if you like spooky stories which emphasise atmosphere rather than gore, then my mini-Ebook, The Lost Highway, might just be what you’re looking for.

Featuring six short stories, it’s available as a Kindle Ebook (you don’t need a Kindle to read it, just the Kindle app) from Amazon. Price is £1.80 and a third of my royalties go to – yup, you’ve got it – charity.

On the subject of charity, I’m pleased to say that twenty-three different charities have thus far received donations from royalties generated by book sales. Indeed, some charities have had multiple payments made to them.

More books will follow next year. All I can say right now is that they won’t all be about cars. Updates about them will appear on the news section of this website and on my twitter pages: @55th_Parallel.

Meantime, I hope you have a lovely Christmas and that 2022 is a better year for all of us.