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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

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Exploring the vast lands Thomas Jefferson bought from France

Exploring the vast lands Thomas Jefferson bought from France

Historians usually credit President Theodore Roosevelt with launching the United States as an imperial power. But no president did more to establish the country as a power to be reckoned with than Thomas Jefferson. In 1803, he took advantage of the turmoil unleashed by Napoleon...

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Popular Fiction

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi died at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Violence erupted immediately. Anti-Sikh riots raged for four days, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs. Eight years later, in December 1992, an organized mob of 70,000...

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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 "Razor Girl" by Carl Hiaasen, a novel about reality TV

Reality TV, African rodents, the roach patrol

Carl Hiassen hit it out of the park with this one, the twentieth of his novels for adults. Razor Girl is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. I could hardly stop laughing. Imagine this: a beautiful young redheaded woman crashes into the back of a luxurious rental car driven by a...
Neptune Crossing is an interplanetary adventure.

Chaos theory triggers an interplanetary adventure

Here's a series starter that introduces a clever, universe-spanning concept in the context of a novel First Contact story. About seventy years ago Isaac Asimov published his Foundation Trilogy (which belatedly won the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series in 1966). Asimov's conceit was that a...
Cover image of "The Singapore Wink" by Ross Thomas, a novel set in 1960s Singapore

An engaging novel of crime and espionage set in 1960s Singapore

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes What do you hope for when you pick up a mystery or thriller? A clever story built around believable conflict? Twists and turns in the plot, and surprises galore? Interesting but credible characters? A refreshing style of writing? Perhaps a dash of humor? You'll...
Cover image of "Land of Dreams," a novel about mythmaking and murder in Hollywood

What lay beneath the glittering surface in Golden Age Hollywood

Three big things happened in America in March 1933. On the fourth day of the month, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office as President. He immediately declared a national banking holiday, temporarily closing every bank in the US and freezing financial transactions. And on March 10, a...
Cover image of "Pale Rider" by Laura Spinney, a book that cautions us about a future pandemic.

Was the Spanish Flu of 1918 a greater disaster than World War II?

A future pandemic of devastating proportions is all too possible given our limited understanding of how to predict the emergence of new strains of killer flu. History could well prove that the COVID-19 pandemic gave us only a foretaste of what is to come. But there is worse in our history. Much...
Cover image of "Birchers," a book about Right-Wing extremism

The roots of today’s Right-Wing extremism

If you wonder who wrote the playbook for the lunatic fringe in today's Republican Party, look no further than the John Birch Society. Established in 1958, the Society terrorized moderate and liberal Republicans as well as Democrats in the 1960s and early 70s. Its founder, Robert Welch (1899-1985),...
Timescape

An ingenious twist on time travel

Physics can drive you crazy. Solid matter isn't solid. Black holes don't just make matter and light disappear; they suck up information, too. And Schrödinger's cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Go figure. And if paradoxes like these rattle your nerves, you may want to avoid reading...
Cover image of "Oryx and Crake," which is brilliant dystopian fiction

Margaret Atwood’s brilliant dystopian fiction

For several hundred years, since the advent of the Enlightenment, the idea of the perfectibility of the human project has dominated what is broadly called Western thought. Believing, somehow, against all available evidence, leading thinkers from Rousseau and Jefferson to Marx posited that the...
Deacon King Kong is full of unforgettable characters.

Unforgettable characters in this delightful new novel

Why did Sportcoat, a deacon in the Five Ends Baptist Church, shoot Deems Clemens in broad daylight, right in front of his crew and the church ladies? Where does all that white-people's cheese come from like clockwork every year for Hot Sausage to deal it out to all the folks of the Causeway...
Cover image of "The March," a novel about Sherman's March to the Sea

A moving novel about Sherman’s March to the Sea

We remember Sherman's March largely because of the dramatic scene portraying the burning of Atlanta in the blockbuster 1939 film Gone With the Wind. It was the top-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation, and it's still popular online. But that horrific scene when the second city of...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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