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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A Tang Dynasty judge solves a string of baffling murders

A Tang Dynasty judge solves a string of baffling murders

For readers in the USA or Europe, it can be a challenge to understand law enforcement policies and procedures in countries grounded in non-Western values and assumptions. In China, for example. The Inspector Chen novels of the Chinese expatriate author Qiu Xiaolong show just...

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NONFICTION

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

Few know his name today. But over a 34-year military career, Marine officer Smedley Butler (1881-1940) was for long America's most famous soldier. He fought in the Philippine–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and all of the USA's imperial...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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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.

Check out our rotating random selection here, culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "A Single Spy," a novel about a Soviet spy in Nazi Germany

A Soviet spy in Nazi Germany

Nineteen thirty-six. Soviet Azerbaijan. Alexsi, in flight from the violence of an orphanage since the age of thirteen, is living on the streets of Baku when he falls in with a gang of tribesmen who live by smuggling goods over the border between the Soviet Union and Iran. "After a few trips he had...
Corrupt spies take center stage in "Twilight at Mac's Place" by Ross Thomas.

Corrupt spies and bent politicians in this clever murder mystery

Ross Thomas was forty-one years old in 1967, when his first novel was published. He had already lived an eventful life. Thomas served in the infantry in the Philippines in World War II and later worked as a reporter and a public relations specialist. Most famously, he also hired out as a political...
Cover image of "The Premonition," a book about the COVID pandemic

What went wrong in the COVID pandemic?

In a full-page ad for Michael Lewis' new book inside the front cover of the New York Times Magazine (May 9, 2021), the publisher asks, "Where did we go wrong? And how can we get it right?" After all, as the ad states, "In 2019, a panel of public health experts judged the U.S. to be more prepared...
Cover image of "Feed," an award-winning novel

A terrifying vision of the future in an award-winning young adult novel

M. T. Anderson's award-winning novel, Feed, is one of the scariest books I've read in many years (and it was written for teenagers!). Yet the terror it evokes emerges only slowly, as Anderson reveals, chapter by chapter, additional details that demonstrate the hopelessness of the future society he...
Cover image of "The Ice Princess," a crime novel set in a small Swedish town

Murder on ice in a small Swedish town

The gruesome murder of a young woman named Alexandra Wijkner has scandalized the small Swedish town of Fjallbacka and given its incompetent police superintendent an opportunity to regain his position in the big city of Goteborg, or so he thinks. In fact, Patrik Hedstrøm, a young detective, is...
Cover image of "Dissolution," a novel about a murder at a monastery

The best novels about the Tudors

England’s Tudor Dynasty (1485-1603) encompassed the reign of five monarchs. But just three of them ruled for a combined total of more than a century: Henry VII (reigned 1485-1509), Henry VIII (1509-47), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) They ushered in unprecedented change in England’s fortunes,...
The Bellini Card by Jason Goodwin

A very odd couple solves murders in this historical novel

It's 1840. A eunuch in service to the Ottoman sultan is, improbably, an accomplished detective, a gifted hand-to-hand fighter, and even a lover of women (or, at least, one woman) in this fanciful but flawed mystery story. Dr. Watson to Yashim's Sherlock Holmes is a Polish Count ejected from his...
Cover image of "The Lacquer Screen,"

A detective in Tang Dynasty China goes undercover

Western readers of suspense fiction look to the work of 19th century authors Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allen Poe for the origins of the detective novel. But in fact there are antecedents in China preceding the two men's work by hundreds of years. Ming Dynasty stories appeared based on historical...
Cover image of "Pandemic," a book about the history of contagious disease

The existential threat of contagious disease

To judge from the over the top rhetoric on display among the Republican candidates in the 2016 Presidential primary campaign, many millions of Americans live in abject fear of immigration, terrorism, and having their guns taken away. It's true there are genuine reasons to fear that our lives, our...
Cover image of "The Vig," the first of the Dismas Hardy series

A great start to John Lescroart’s Dismas Hardy series

Dismas Hardy's resumé is a little difficult to understand: former Marine (combat in Vietnam), former San Francisco cop, former Assistant DA, now one-quarter owner of the Shamrock and full-time bartender there. The explanation is simple, though. The events that induced him to leave a promising...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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