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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard, are moving into a remote cabin in Minnesota. But his name isn't Leonard Summers. It's Leonid Sokolov. And "he was in some kind of enforcement branch of the Russian spy agency," Lucas Davenport explains to fellow US Marshal...

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NONFICTION

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

From its early days following World War I, what Hitler later renamed the Nazi Party had a powerful political sponsor behind the scenes: the Thule Society. Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw notes that the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi...

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Popular Fiction

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

Women did not begin to gain any measure of equality with men until sometime in the 20th century. So it is always inspiring to read about women whose accomplishments were so outstanding that even under the most egregious pressure of misogyny they made their mark on history. One...

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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 "A Coffin for Dimitrios," a classic spy novel

Still a lively read among classic spy novels

First published in 1939, A Coffin for Dimitrios is widely regarded as one of the very best of the classic spy novels. That reputation is richly deserved. But it would be a mistake to pigeonhole what may be Eric Ambler's most accomplished work as merely an espionage novel, as it features few of the...
A Prisoner in Malta is a historical mystery novel.

A delightful historical mystery novel starring Christopher Marlowe

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes If you're looking for a swashbuckling adventure story, check out A Prisoner in Malta by Phillip DePoy. In this fast-moving historical mystery novel featuring Christopher Marlowe, the 19-year-old poet and playwright swashes buckles with the best of them. Naturally,...
Anatomy of a Genocide puts the Holocaust under a microscope.

Anatomy of a Genocide: the Holocaust under the microscope

If you read most general histories of World War II, you're likely to get the impression that the Holocaust was a simple, straightforward affair. Hitler resolved to "solve the Jewish problem" by simply killing all the Jews in Europe. And once the policy was set, German soldiers in the SS proceeded...
Cover image of "Fallout," a thriller about biowarfare

Biowarfare, white supremacists, and a Hollywood star in the new Sara Paretsky

In the course of 18 novels by the redoubtable mystery writer Sara Paretsky, courageous Chicago detective V.I. (Vic) Warshawski has come face to face with corruption both public and private in her quixotic crusade to clean up her hometown—and get a life in the process. Now, in the 19th, Vic travels...
Cover image of "Echo House," one of the best novels about politics

The five best novels about politics

Please focus on the headline. What you’ll see below is a list of the five best novels about politics—as distinct from political novels. The stories here cast light on the mechanics of the political process—insider baseball, if you will. By contrast, a political novel reflects the...
The Forever War is a classic science fiction war novel.

This classic science fiction war novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards

Joe Haldeman's classic science fiction war novel, The Forever War, appears on most lists of the all-time most popular stories in the field. The book won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. When it was published in 1974, the Vietnam War was winding down. Haldeman had fought in the war...
Cover image of "Tomorrowville,"

He wakes up to a future dystopian America

For some reason I can't fathom, one of the most vivid fantasies of my childhood was the story of Rip Van Winkle. The celebrated American author Washington Irving published a short story of that title in 1819. His hero is an indolent Dutch-American man in pre-Revolutionary New York who wanders off...
Masked Prey

John Sandford’s millionaire investigator takes on the alt-right

Lucas Davenport is one of the most engaging protagonists in all of crime fiction, and he has proven as popular as he is commanding. Davenport's creator, John Sandford, has just published Masked Prey, the thirtieth bestseller in the Prey series that features the millionaire investigator. Here, in...
Cover image of "Vienna Spies," a novel set in wartime Vienna

A stirring tale of spies in wartime Vienna

In The Secret War, his illuminating revisionist history of secret intelligence in World War II, the British journalist Max Hastings questions the value of what has come to be called "humint," the product of spies working undercover. In Hastings' view, spies had little effect on the outcome of the...
Cover image of "Cadillac Jukebox," an example of Louisiana noir

The master of Louisiana noir

Veteran detective Dave Robicheaux of the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department is reluctantly drawn into a case involving the decades-old assassination of Louisiana's leading NAACP leader. Aaron Crown is serving time for the murder but protests his innocence, and a Hollywood film crew seems bent on...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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