The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

First Contact deep in the Amazon rainforest

First Contact deep in the Amazon rainforest

What can I say about a book that could have been great but isn't? In Entropy, the 31st entry in his long-running series of standalone novels about First Contact with alien intelligence, Australian author Peter Cawdron tells a gripping story about the crash of a private jet deep...

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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Travis McGee stumbles into a massive financial fraud

Travis McGee stumbles into a massive financial fraud

He calls himself a beach bum. Travis McGee lives on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale and only works when he's running out of money. Then he becomes a "salvage consultant," helping someone who's been robbed blind. He'll steal back the money or valuables—for half the take. But this...

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NONFICTION

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!

 

A Tip for the Hangman

This historical spy story ignores history

When historical novelists depart from the recorded facts of history on occasion, it's generally understandable. For example, in her excellent novel of the Wars of the Roses, The Kingmaker's Daughter, Philippa Gregory ignores the six-month interregnum in the reign of King Edward IV, and that...
Cover image of "The Edge of Anarchy,"

The American labor movement in the Gilded Age

Today's widening gap between rich and poor—the billionaires versus the rest of us—is often compared to that in the Gilded Age. Then, the parties involved were the Robber Barons at society's pinnacle and the working men and women whose labor generated the obscene wealth the rich displayed with such...
Cover image of "Murder at Cape Three Points,"

A captivating murder mystery set in Ghana

Observers of Third World politics and economic development write about the resource curse. They note that certain countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are rich in oil or minerals fail to invest the resulting wealth in bettering the lives of their people. Instead, the money flows into...
Cover image of "Blackwater Falls," the debut of a series of small-town thrillers

The debut of a brilliant new series of small-town thrillers

Many of the eighty percent of Americans who live in cities are unaware of the demographic revolution underway in the vast rural stretches of our country. The Immigration Act of 1965 ushered in a flood of racial or ethnic minorities to rural America over the past half-century. They now account for...
Cover image of "Down Among the Dead Men," a good example of English mystery novels

Another contender among English mystery novels

It's interesting to speculate whether the number of murders depicted in English mystery novels is greater than the number of murders actually recorded in the country. I suspect it's a close call. Peter Lovesey is one of the culprits in that caper. He is responsible for not one but two detective...
Luciano's Luck is about the Mafia and the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Fact and fiction about the Mafia and the WWII Allied invasion of Sicily

Future New York Governor Tom Dewey convicted Mafia boss Charlie "Lucky" Luciano for running a prostitution racket in 1936. Luciano was the American equivalent of the Sicilian capo di tutti capi, or boss of all the bosses; he was the first head of the modern Genovese crime family and the creator...
Cover image of "American Judas," a satirical novel in which the Religious Right has won

The Religious Right is the target in this dystopian satire

Fast forward to . . . whenever. The Religious Right has won. Ten years earlier Congress had passed the CHRIST Act, which declared Christianity as the official religion of the United States of America. "The Twenty-Eighth Amendment, which repealed part of the First Amendment, made it possible for...
Cover image of "The Devil's Novice,"

A medieval mystery opens a window on 12th century England

Reading the Cadfael Chronicles is one of the best ways I've found to open a window on life in medieval Europe. Set on the English-Welsh border in the middle of the twelfth century, these clever little mysteries illuminate life within a Benedictine monastery, in the surrounding town, and in the...
Cover image of "Theory of Bastards," a near-future novel

Seeking clues for human evolution in animal behavior

Don't be misled by the provocative title. The "Theory of Bastards" in Audrey Schulman's artful near-future novel has nothing to do with offensive or disagreeable people. The protagonist is Dr. Frankie Burk, an evolutionary biologist. And she is researching patterns of pairing among bonobos, a...

Understanding the secret American campaign against Al Qaeda

A review of Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Asainst Al Qaeda, by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker. @@@ (3 out of 5). Counterstrike is a remarkable bit of longitudinal reporting by two veterans of the New York Times, bringing to light a host of insights and behind-the-scene details about America’s decade-long campaign against Al Qaeda. However, Schmitt and Shanker might have benefited from a few lessons in nonfiction writing by a master of the craft such as Tracy Kidder, Erik Larson, or even Bob Woodward.

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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