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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A hilarious romp through the byways of small-town crime

A hilarious romp through the byways of small-town crime

To be clear at the outset, you should not expect a realistic picture of small-town crime when you read Justin Halpern's comic masterpiece, Get Lost. What you'll get instead is a fiendishly clever story that somehow involves a missing woman, corrupt almond farmers, a Big Box...

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NONFICTION

He could have been king. Or a dictator. He retired instead.

He could have been king. Or a dictator. He retired instead.

Myths and legends swirl around the life of George Washington. Remember that cherry tree? The wooden teeth? Throwing a coin across a wide river? The white wig? All of these widely accepted beliefs about our founding President are flatly untrue. And, just for the record, he was...

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Popular Fiction

American history, laughing all the way

American history, laughing all the way

Scoot yourself over, Huckleberry Finn! Make room! Here comes Henry Shackleford, aka Henrietta, aka Little Onion, with a tall tale ripped and twisted out of the pages of history that's like to set your britches afire. Yes, here's The Good Lord Bird, courtesy of James McBride, a...

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Explore My “BEST OF the category” selections

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?

When people ask me that question, I never know what to say. In a lifetime of reading, I’ve read many thousands of books. And I’ve reviewed well over 2,000 of them on this site. Picking just one as a “favorite,” or even a handful of them, makes no sense to me.

The problem is, I read for many different reasons. Perhaps you do, too. And I read many different sorts of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Popular fiction, especially historical fiction. Science fiction.

And nonfiction, history in particular. You’ll find hundreds of reviews in every one of those categories on this site.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Nail-biting suspense in Joseph Finder’s latest thriller

How good is Joseph Finder's latest thriller? Let me put it this way: for the first time in a great while, I literally couldn't put the book down -- I HAD to know who was doing what to whom! Danny Goodman is writing a biography of Jay Gould, the archetypal 19th century Robber Baron, when he...
Cover image of "The Expats," a novel about cyber theft.

A truly suspenseful novel about cyber theft

Mix the CIA, the FBI, secretive European banks, and a diabolical large-scale cyber theft, add long-hidden secrets and exotic Continental settings, and, with a little luck, a lot of skill, and an intimate knowledge of Western Europe, you may be able to fashion a hard-driving thriller that's...
Cover image of "Rubbernecker,"

This slow-burning thriller will haunt you for years

When Belinda Bauer won the top British award for crime fiction for her debut novel, she told a reporter she was surprised the Crime Writer's Association considered it a crime novel. It wasn't a whodunit, after all. Only three or four years later, after several later novels, did she accept that she...
Cover image of "The Woman Who Smashed Codes" by Jason Fagone, a book about a famous woman codebreaker

The woman codebreaker who caught gangsters and Nazi spies

When Richard Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier famously said, "It's too early to tell." That terse response is generally understood to illustrate the Chinese ability to take the long view of history. But it might be more accurate to...
Cover image of "The Matchmaker," a spy thriller

The best mysteries and thrillers of 2022

To be clear, what follows is not a list of the best mysteries and thrillers published during the past year. Instead, I’ve decided not to copy those reviewers who imply they've read the many thousands of mysteries and thrillers published in any given year. Nobody, and no team of...
Cover image of "London," the book involved when I asked how AI views a novel

A monumental historical saga of London spanning 2,000 years

Only once in the past 15 years since I began reviewing books have I written about anything without reading it to the end. But I'm about to break that rule for a second time. I'm doing so to convey some of what I've learned about the use of artificial intelligence as it might influence my craft. I...
Cover image of "Three Minutes to Doomsday," a book about the worst spy scandal in US history

The worst spy scandal in US history, and it’s not what you think

Since the advent of the Second World War more than eighty years ago, spies have stripped the United States of a sobering volume of critical, top-secret information that threatens our security. Name a few names, and students of espionage will immediately recognize the spy scandals they caused....
Cover image of "The Second Girl," a novel about drug traffickers

An anti-hero ex-cop takes on drug traffickers

Frankie Marr is not a good guy. After seventeen years on the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police, he was forced to retire when the brass discovered he had been helping himself to the drugs recovered in narcotics busts. Now, he works as a private eye to supplement his meager police pension. To feed...
Cover image of "Grunt," a book about military science

A journalist looks at military science, tongue in cheek

There's something seriously wrong with Mary Roach. Conjure up any vile, disgusting, or taboo subject that anyone in her right mind would shun -- and you'll find Mary Roach has written a book about it (or is probably planning to do so). Her books to date have dealt with cadavers, the afterlife,...
Cover image of "Picket Line ,"

Elmore Leonard’s long-lost novella explores farmworkers’ lives

More than half a century ago, Elmore Leonard was eking out a living writing pulp Western novels. He was about to take a sharp turn into crafting the crime novels that would establish his reputation as one of the most brilliant stylists in the genre and earn him both wide recognition and a lot of...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

The latest mystery
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…includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.

My latest
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every Thursday.

…includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.

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