Michael Phillips

Michael Phillips is a prolific bestselling author, with sales of his fiction, nonfiction, and devotional writings exceeding seven million copies worldwide. A leading authority on the works and message of George MacDonald and their connections to C.S. Lewis, he and his wife Judy are former bookstore owners and split their time between George MacDonald’s Scotland and their home in California.

Featured Books By Author

Murder by Quill

Best-selling novelist Michael Phillips sets up a wonderful cast of characters in this witty mystery set in a fictionalized adaptation of Cullen House in northern Scotland. An eclectic group of aspiring authors--winners of a prestigious writing contest--is invited to a "writer's retreat" at the home of wealthy philanthropist Hugh Barrabault. He is a man who can make each of them famous overnight. They have everything to gain by the success of Barrabault's endeavor. When their host is found murdered by a writing quill of unusual design, late one stormy night when secluded in his mansion with none but his author-guests, it is obvious one of them possesses motives other than fame and fortune. It turns out that all eight have secrets they would prefer not be divulged. When alliances and tensions develop between the former strangers, accusations begin to fly. Someone must take charge. But what if that someone is the murderer?
Read more

Discovering the Character of God

Following the enormous response to his updated editions of George MacDonald’s novels in the 1980s, Michael Phillips felt the need to introduce MacDonald’s fiction readers also to the Scotsman’s poetry and theological perspectives. At the time none of MacDonald’s non-fiction writings or poetry was available. Phillips therefore compiled two anthologies of selections, topically arranged, from those writings. Almost thirty years later, the two volumes—Discovering the Character of God and Knowing the Heart of God—remain classics in the MacDonald bibliography that have helped multiple thousands probe their understanding of God more deeply. These two clearly organized and understandable illuminations of MacDonald’s wisdom distill the essence of MacDonald’s thought in manageable topical groupings suitable for devotional reading or more extensive study. Each chapter also draws upon selections from the novels and poetry to illuminate MacDonald’s vision of the infinitely loving and forgiving Fatherhood of God.
Read more

A Sacrifice of Obedience

A Sacrifice of Obedience was written through the years 2002 and 2003 as an intended sequel to Make Me Like Jesus. It was never published.

Fifteen years have now passed. As I look at the world around me, it seems less likely than ever that Christians in very large numbers will be drawn to a message about sacrifice or obedience. And I am no different. I resist both imperatives just like everyone else. I had hoped by this time in my life to be a little further along.

But obedience remains the bull’s eye of the Christian faith, and the very personal bull’s eye of my own life. Thus, the time at last seems right to revisit this manuscript and share it with whatever fellow pilgrims there may be on that isolated and occasionally lonely path.

You who read these words may be few. Even in Christendom, where the image of the cross looms large in the imaginations and theologies of its many churches and their members, the actual cross-life of sacrifice and obedience is not so well known.

Yet to such a life we are called. It is the only life to which we are called.

Let us, then, courageously explore together a few high points along the Lord’s earthly Calvary road to see what they have to reveal about that life.

Read more

Books By
Michael Phillips