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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 "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," the first of the Lisbeth Salander novels.

The magical Lisbeth Salander novels

To date (January 2021), a total of six books have been published in the Millennium Series originated by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Larsson wrote the first three Lisbeth Salander novels in a projected series of ten before suddenly passing away at the age of fifty in 2004. Three new books were...
The Case of the Love Commandos is solved by India's #1 private detective.

India’s #1 private detective and the Love Commandos

So, here we go again. The vainglorious Vishwas Puri, who styles himself India's #1 private detective, is off and running on another case with his motley team of assistants . . . and his mother. On three cases, actually, which is only par for the course for the corpulent, food-fancying sleuth. For...
Cover image of "Dark Angel,"

John Sandford’s badass young detective takes on dangerous hackers

In a series of 36 crime novels to date, John Sandford has traced the career of crack investigator Lucas Davenport for four decades. Marketed under the "Prey" umbrella, the books follow Davenport from his time in Minnesota, first on the city's police force, then in a senior role in the fictional...
Cover image of "Deadly Memory," a novel about a dinosaur who survived the extinction

Paleontologists unearth a deadly weapon—and a killer virus

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes This dinosaur survived the Cretaceous Extinction. His name is Sweet Blood of Easy Prey Just After Slaughter, but they don't know that. He's Charlie to them. He's only about five feet tall, so he's not unmanageably large. And now they've got him locked up deep...
December 6 is a thriller set in Imperial Japan.

A standalone novel from the author of the Arkady Renko stories

Martin Cruz Smith is best known for the eight bestselling novels (with the ninth now on the way) about police detective Arkady Renko in the USSR and, later, Russia. However, he has written nearly two dozen other books, including two other series of thrillers and a number of standalone novels....
Memory is the 10th book in a brilliant science fiction saga.

A science fiction saga that’s endlessly entertaining

Lord Miles Vorkosigan, otherwise known as Admiral Miles Naismith of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, is suffering from "an aftereffect of an acute case of death." Something went wrong in his cryorevival, and he now suffers seizures at the most inopportune moments. Miles is now 30 years old. His...
Cover image of "The Doorman,"

Murder and intrigue at New York’s most famous apartment building

A deranged young man shot John Lennon to death outside the front door in 1980. The Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono were living there in the co-op apartment building called The Dakota. They were not the first, or the last, of the world-famous people who had made the Dakota home. For example, Lauren...
Cover image of "The Drowned Cities," a novel in which Washington DC is underwater

Washington DC is underwater in this thrilling sci-fi novel

Marketed as a book for young readers, but science fiction at its best for readers of any age. A thrilling, post-apocalyptic story.

Cover image of "Squeeze Me," a savage takedown of Donald Trump.

A snake stars in Carl Hiaasen’s savage takedown of Donald Trump

Carl Hiaasen sure knows how to lead off a story, and he proves it all over again in a savage takedown of Donald Trump. "On the night of January twenty-third, unseasonably warm," he writes, "a woman named Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons went missing during a charity gala in the exclusive island town of Palm...
Cover image of "Run and Hide," a novel that highlights economic inequality in India today

A compelling novel explores economic inequality in India today

For millennia, the huge peninsula we call India today has been Asia's pivot. South of the central Asian steppes, midway between the European trade routes of the Middle East, the Chinese behemoth, and the East African coast, India has long been one of the most diverse places on the planet. Waves of...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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