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 "The Korean War,"

The lessons we forgot from the Korean War—or never understood

Three-quarters of a century ago, the United States embarked on a war on the other side of the globe that almost never enters the consciousness of living Americans today. President Harry Truman's decision to undertake this "police action," as he termed it. proved to be a strategic decision of...
Transcription, Kate Atkinson's latest, is a spy story.

Kate Atkinson’s latest is a beautifully written spy story

Strange. After reading her earlier books, the last thing I would have expected is humor. Yet Kate Atkinson's latest, Transcription, is surprisingly funny. Well, maybe witty is a better word. This is British humor, after all. Dry humor. The sort of thing most Americans frown through. Estimated...
Cover image of "Chain of Title," a book about foreclosure fraud

Understanding Wall Street’s great foreclosure fraud

Recent events have made us all aware that police officers sometimes act outside the law, not just in fiction but in reality. But what about their bosses and their bosses' bosses? And the judges, attorneys general, and Justice Department officials who are supposed to oversee the administration of...
Cover image of "The Terraformers," a novel that portrays a hopeful future

A hopeful future in this brilliant new novel

When Berkeley-based science fiction author Annalee Newitz set out to write a novel about a hopeful future, The Terraformers was the result. And I am here to report that they succeeded brilliantly. It's set at a far-distant time when the human race has spread among thousands of worlds throughout...
The Marylebone Drop is a worthy addition to the Slough House series.

Mick Herron scores with another entry in the Slough House series

In the spy novels of John le Carre and Graham Greene, things sometimes go wrong. Their spies are not superhuman, or even always competent. In Mick Herron's books, things always go wrong. Herron writes stories about the men and women of MI5 and what the British would call their cock-ups (while we...
Exigency

Scientists explore a planet with two sentient species

For six years they've been in orbit around Epsilon C, a rocky, Earth-like planet that hosts not one but two sentient species. The nine are on a mission of scientific exploration. They've devoted their lives to it. And they've learned a great deal about the local inhabitants. Even—with tiny probes...
Cover image of "Blindsighted" by Karin Slaughter, one of the Grant County thrillers

Karin Slaughter’s well-crafted series of Grant County thrillers

Karin Slaughter's first novel in the Grant County series, Blindsighted, was published in almost 30 languages and made the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger Award shortlist for "Best Thriller Debut" of 2001. In addition to the six-book Grant County series of...
Cover image of "Field of Prey," a detective story from John Sandford

Another masterful detective story from John Sandford

Lucas Davenport's talented investigative crew at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ("others investigate bad guys, we apprehend them") is dispersed throughout the country when all hell breaks loose with the discovery of a long-forgotten cistern containing the bones of more than a dozen...
Cover image of "Janesville" by Amy Goldstein, illustrating this Janesville book review

Janesville book review: The human cost of the Great Recession

Amy Goldstein frames her insightful new book, Janesville, as An American Story. By following the fortunes of a half-dozen families in Janesville, Wisconsin, Goldstein dramatizes the impact of the Great Recession of 2008 in the years following the closure of a large Chevrolet factory. The recession...
Cover image of "The Postmistress of Paris," a novel about rescuing Jewish refugees

Rescuing anti-Nazi refugee artists from WWII France

Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany crowded into France in the years leading up to World War II. Among them were a great many prominent intellectuals and artists, including the painter Max Ernst and the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger. In France, they congregated with Anti-Nazi French artists including...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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