The Latest

They grew the country’s vegetables

They grew the country’s vegetables

If you watched the HBO drama Succession, you'll have a sense of what happened to the once-famous Seabrook frozen-food dynasty. Succession features a tyrannical "self-made" founder, hideous corporate crime, cynical right-wing politics, sibling rivalry, backstabbing, and worse....

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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A tense medical thriller from a master of the craft

A tense medical thriller from a master of the craft

If you're fond of reading medical thrillers, you've probably come across the names of the leading practitioners of the craft. Tess Gerritsen, for example, author of The Surgeon. Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain). Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay...

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NONFICTION

They grew the country’s vegetables

They grew the country’s vegetables

If you watched the HBO drama Succession, you'll have a sense of what happened to the once-famous Seabrook frozen-food dynasty. Succession features a tyrannical "self-made" founder, hideous corporate crime, cynical right-wing politics, sibling rivalry, backstabbing, and worse....

read more

Popular Fiction

A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

A brilliant novel of love, hope, and the Rwanda genocide

Today, Rwanda is one of the brightest lights in Africa. The economy is booming. Corruption is rare. Government delivers services. The streets of Kigali, the capital, are clean. It's even easy to open a business. Thirty years ago the country was in chaos, as this award-winning...

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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!

 

Cover image of "Brave New World"

Rereading Brave New World with a would-be dictator in the White House

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's seminal works of dystopian literature. Critics today tend to group it with George Orwell's 1984, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and other highly respected...
Cover image of "Extreme Prey," a novel about left-wing extremists

Lucas Davenport takes on left-wing extremists

Lucas Davenport took his first bow on stage in 1989 with the publication of John Sandford's second novel, Rules of Prey. Now, 27 years and 26 books later in the Prey series, Davenport has left behind the bureaucratic hassles of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, where he led a team of...
Cover image of "The Eighth Dwarf," a mystery about a dwarf

Snow White wouldn’t like this dwarf

It's 1946. Captain Minor Jackson has just mustered out of the OSS, which had been disbanded one month after Japan's surrender in World War II. Jackson was looking for an easy way to make money -- a lot of money -- when a chance encounter with a Romanian dwarf named Nicolae Ploscaru opens up what...
The Eleventh Gate is space opera.

Political philosophies clash in this new space opera

Violations of the laws of physics notwithstanding, there is a truly excellent reason to read this intriguing new exercise in space opera. It's one of the best explorations I've ever come across in the genre about politics and political philosophy. (Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy offers...
A Conspiracy of Paper features the first modern crime lord.

Financial skullduggery in 18th century England in this historical thriller

Take a wild ride to early 18th-century England. You'll meet a famous Jewish boxer, the men behind the South Sea Bubble, and the world's first modern crime lord. Welcome to David Liss' carefully constructed account of A Conspiracy of Paper. The book won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel....
Cover image of "Agent Storm," a book about al Qaeda

A truly amazing story about Al Qaeda, and it’s real

Forget James Bond. Six-foot-one, 250 pounds, with flaming red hair, Morten Storm is the real deal. This guy really did infiltrate al-Qaeda and operate at the highest levels of the network for many years. And, apparently, he's still alive (somewhere) to tell the tale in this amazing book about Al...
Cover image of "Flood of Fire," a novel about the Opium War

An outstanding Indian novelist looks at the Opium War

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Opium is at center stage in Flood of Fire, which traces the consequential history of the British, their Indian allies, and the mandarins ruling China just before and during the First Opium War. Though it occurred nearly two centuries ago, this historical event is...
Across a Billion Years depicts an advanced alien civilization.

A science fiction master imagines a uniquely advanced alien civilization

Every science fiction fan must be familiar with Robert Silverberg. The man has written more than 300 books, most of them SF. He won the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA) in 2003—a rare honor that goes only to the best in the business. If you read a...

In Ishmael Beah’s novel, hope lives on in the depths of hell

If you think you’ve experienced the worst that a human being can bear, Ishmael Beah will show you how very wrong you are. Then, remarkably, he’ll share his hope for better and leave you feeling restored. In Radiance of Tomorrow -- just in case you didn't get it, radiance = hope...
inspector lynley novel: Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George’s latest Inspector Lynley novel, unpredictable as always

A review of Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George. @@@@ (4 out of 5). When Inspector Lynley is despatched to Cumbria to look into the murder of the nephew of a rich and powerful man, you might expect a straightforward tale of crime and punishment. What you’ll get instead is a complex tale of intrigue, adultery, family secrets, and betrayal.

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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