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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

NONFICTION

Many write about Donald Trump. These authors really know.

Many write about Donald Trump. These authors really know.

Obviously, I'm some kind of masochist. To date I've read and reviewed 25 books about Donald Trump. I'd sworn off subjecting myself to any others until Maggie Haberman's account of Trump's first year back in office. She's been on point on Donald Trump for the New York Times for...

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Popular Fiction

Why do some novels win literary awards?

Why do some novels win literary awards?

Let's see if we can figure out why this paper-thin work of fiction won wide recognition and a literary award for its author. Snow Hunters introduces . . . let's count them: eight characters in 226 pages: Yohan, a North Korean soldier captured by UN forces late in the Korean...

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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 "Night Shift,"

A tense medical thriller from a master of the craft

If you're fond of reading medical thrillers, you've probably come across the names of the leading practitioners of the craft. Tess Gerritsen, for example, author of The Surgeon. Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain). Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta series. And Michael...
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

A medical student flees genocide in Burundi to New York City

Strength in What Remains is the story of Deogratias," as the author writes (more succinctly than I could) in a post on Amazon.com, "a young man from the central African nation of Burundi. In 1993, through no fault of his own, he was forced onto a terrifying journey, a journey that split his life...
Cover image of "Clowns," a novel that seeks to answer the question, Where are all the aliens?

Where are all the aliens?

For six decades, astronomers around the world have been scanning the skies for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos. In 1984, the effort led to the creation of a program called Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Surely, the organizers of SETI believed, someone, somewhere...
Cover image of "The Deceivers" by Alex Berenson, a John Wells spy novel

Russia takes the next step in the latest John Wells spy novel

Is a new Cold War underway between the United States and Russia? Certainly, the signs are emerging. The two countries are at loggerheads in Ukraine and Syria, and the Russian response to deepening US sanctions has seemed increasingly desperate. Russian efforts to upend the 2016 presidential...
Cover image of "Charcoal Joe," a novel about everybody's favorite African-American detective.

Everybody’s favorite African-American detective

Walter Mosley's hard-boiled sleuth Easy Rawlins roamed the streets of Watts from the 1940s through the 1960s. If there was someone of note in the region unknown to African-American detective Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, he could turn to a wide range of friends and acquaintances, some in law...
Citizens of London

The men behind the British-American partnership in WWII

Most accounts of the British-American alliance in World War II dwell on the closeness between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. But a more fine-toothed inspection of history reveals that others played equally significant roles in making the relationship work. And historian Lynne Olsen has...
Cover image of "Doctor Copernicus," a fictionalized Copernicus biography

He revolutionized our view of the universe

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes For nearly fifteen hundred years Europeans regarded the Roman-Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (100-170) as the ultimate authority on humanity's understanding of the universe. He viewed the Earth as the center of the universe. The moon, the planets, the sun,...
Maisie Dobbs review of To Die But Once

Maisie Dobbs, Dunkirk, and the war at home in England

In the spring of 1940, World War II had been underway in Europe for more than half a year, but the violence had yet to come home to England. Suddenly, on May 10, Hitler's legions rumbled across the borders of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and, finally, France. The 300,000-man British Expeditionary...
Cover image of "Destiny Disrupted" a book that presents an Islamic perspective

An Islamic perspective on history

It seems remarkable to me that Destiny Disrupted is the first new global history written from an Islamic perspective that has come to my attention in the fourteen years since 9/11. After all, analyses of events in what we call the Middle East frequently emphasize that Muslims perceive the world...
This post examines what Americans read the most.

What do Americans read the most?

Image: NBC News Estimated reading time: 4 minutes When you read books, what floats your boat? If you're among the 54 percent of Americans who have read one or more books in the past year, chances are you read mysteries and crime stories. Or so we learn from a recent post on YouGov (December 21,...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

Weekly book reviews to match your taste!

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Mal Warwick

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