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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Colson Whitehead’s brilliant Harlem Trilogy concludes

Colson Whitehead’s brilliant Harlem Trilogy concludes

In Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Colson Whitehead begins the story of Harlem furniture dealer and part-time fence Ray Carney. Cool Machine concludes the tale in three self-contained but interlocking stories, each set in a different year of...

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NONFICTION

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Lima, Ohio, (population 50,000 then), I learned that our local daily, The Lima News, had been purchased by a man named R. C. Hoiles. Hoiles lived in Orange County, California, and was a member of the John Birch Society. He owned a chain...

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Popular Fiction

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Shortly after the 19th century turned into the 20th, a medical sleuth named George Soper, whom we would today call an epidemiologist, identified a young Irish immigrant cook in New York City as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen that causes typhoid fever. Her name was Mary...

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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 Big Empty," one of the top mystery and thriller award winners

The top mystery and thriller award winners

Most citations of awards in the mystery, thriller, and suspense field mention the Edgar, Gold Dagger, Anthony, and International Thriller Writer Awards. But the categories used by these four awards don’t match. And as you’ll see, the awards themselves don’t often, either. For example, the Mystery...
Cover image of "The Berlin Exchange," a novel about a spy swap in East Berlin

An ingenious tale about a spy swap in East Berlin

The two decades following World War II brought a rush of unwelcome revelations to Great Britain and the United States. One by one, spies working for the Soviet Union surfaced. The FBI and MI5 uncovered some, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the US and Klaus Fuchs in the UK. Others—most...
Funny crime fiction written by John Sandford: "Deadline"

Funny crime fiction, and from John Sandford!

It's rare in my experience to come across funny crime fiction. Donald E. Westlake's series about the master criminal John Dortmunder was a glaring exception and never failed to please. Carl Hiaasen's novels about environmental crimes fit the bill, too. Timothy Hallinan writes hilarious stories...
The Counterfeit Agent in Alex Berenson's novel is a rogue ex-CIA agent.

Alex Berenson’s John Wells takes on a rogue ex-CIA agent

The modern history of Iran and the US is fraught with conflict. Today, Americans vilify the ayatollahs who have governed Iran since its revolution in 1979. We're all too likely to forget (assuming we ever knew in the first place) that the Iranian Revolution was in large part a consequence of the...
Iraqi view: Nabeel's Song by Jo Tatchell

The Iraqi view of life under Saddam Hussein

The celebrated Iraqi poet Nabeel Yasin and his family were front-row witnesses to the brutality, the indignities, and the humiliations of life under Saddam Hussein for more than three decades. In this lovingly written family biography, Jo Tatchell, a British freelance journalist and friend of...
u.s. military: The Outpost by Jake Tapper

How the U.S. military wages war in Afghanistan

A review of The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, by Jake Tapper. @@@@ (4 out of 5). The story of the courageous U.S. soldiers who served in an isolated combat outpost in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2009.

Nairobi Heat is about the Rwanda genocide.

An African American detective investigates the Rwanda genocide

This is not a book for the faint of heart. In the course of its two hundred pages, the body count mounts again and again. In the end, I counted twenty-seven dead. Now, perhaps that's to be expected in a novel about the Rwanda genocide, when more than a million perished. But it seems a little over...
Core image of "Affections" by Rodrigo Hasbun, a powerful family drama

A family drama set during Che Guevara’s revolution

In just 145 pages, the Bolivian novelist Rodrigo Hasbún manages to portray a full-length novel's cast of characters in vivid colors. Hasbún is recognized as one of Latin America's leading young novelists. Affections, his second novel and third book, follows a German immigrant family in Bolivia...
Wicked Prey is a story about Lucas Davenport's BCA.

The clever detectives of Lucas Davenport’s BCA meet three challenges

In most television cop shows, the clever detectives on the squad grapple with one baffling case. They solve it, of course. Then, in the next episode, they move on to another one. It's neat, clean, and easy to follow. By contrast, the printed page offers space to paint a more realistic picture. In...
The Clockwork Dynasty

When ancient robots walked the Earth

Throughout recorded history, we humans have wondered whether external forces have shaped our destiny. Most have found solace in the belief that a god or gods have been our benefactors. A handful of others have imagined that an extraterrestrial race has guided our ascent through time. In an...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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…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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