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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

Nazi Germany reportedly dispatched as many as 135 spies to Britain during World War II. And, according to numerous historical accounts, every single one of them was either captured or turned themselves in to authorities. (At least one didn't fit the pattern, though. He...

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NONFICTION

Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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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.

Check out our rotating random selection here, culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Jade Dragon Mountain

An intriguing murder mystery set in 18th century China

It's 1708, and the still-young Qing Dynasty is consolidating its power. The Kangxi Emperor, second in the dynastic line, plans a year-long journey to loosely-held Yunnan Province to secure the allegiance of the local people. He will arrive in 1708 in time for a mammoth festival, where he will...
Snow

John Banville launches a new detective series

Irish wordsmith John Banville has won the Booker Prize and torrents of praise for the richly textured prose of his novels. He has also written a series of seven historical mysteries set in 1950s Dublin that feature a man named Quirke, the town's coroner, who spends far more time solving crimes...
Cover image of this biography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, reconsidered in the context of his time

Fifty years ago, a 39-year-old man named Malcolm Little was murdered by a team of five assassins in a ballroom in New York City. The shocking event took place in front of a crowd of four hundred people. As news of his murder spread around the world, millions grieved while thousands of FBI and CIA...
Cover image of "The Beekeeper of Aleppo," a novel about Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees flee civil war in hopes of a better life

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes With Vladimir Putin's troops raging across eastern Ukraine, we are losing sight of another armed conflict in the past decade that was even more destructive. Beginning in 2011 in the Arab Spring, protests in Syria against the brutal and corrupt regime of Bashar...
Cover image of "Logan's Run," a dystopian classic

A dystopian classic packed with action

Sometimes it's hard to tell why any Hollywood producer would adapt a novel to film. Usually, however, it's perfectly clear what the attraction is. And that is most certainly the case with the classic science fiction thriller, Logan's Run. Authors William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, both...
Welcome to the Occupied States of America

These alien invaders aren’t what you might expect

If you imagine Martian death-rays or eight-foot-tall bipedal lizards, think again. These alien invaders are called grubs, and for good reason. They travel in enormous packs. They're "minuscule, maggot-like creatures" capable of aggregating in huge numbers and assuming any desired shape. And they...
Cover image of "That Dangerous Energy," a novel about tackling climate change

Tackling climate change—in bed

Readers may know Aya de León as the author of the four books published to date in her Justice Hustlers series of thrillers. Four have appeared to date among her eleven novels. But all her work so far shares an outspoken progressive perspective and highlights an activist approach to today's social...
Cover image of "Old Bones," a WWII mystery

Old bones hold the key to a WWII mystery

Old bones turn up buried under paving stones in the basement of a French villa in 1986. The detective in charge of the case is conveniently located nearby at a week-long police conference on forensic anthropology. There, Dr. Gideon Oliver, an American anthropologist known as the "Skeleton Doctor,"...
Cover image of "Dead Irish," an example of San Francisco noir

John Lescroart: The joy of San Francisco noir

San Francisco bartender Dismas Hardy was briefly a patrol officer in the SFPD while he worked toward a law degree. He left the law shortly after the death of an infant son and divorce from his wife. But when his boss and best friend learns that his popular brother-in-law has mysteriously died,...
Cover image of "The Secret Chord," a biblical story

A biblical story, brilliantly retold

The King David story has been told not just in the Bible but countless other times over the three millennia since he reigned over Israel and Judah. Perhaps never before, though, has any author plumbed so deeply into the complex personality that comes to light from Biblical sources and...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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