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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

When we think of Allied operations in World War II designed to fool the Nazis, most of us think "Normandy." After all, the elaborate efforts to conceal the time and place of D-Day famously included a fake army and hundreds of inflatable tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces....

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NONFICTION

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

Fact vs fiction in the story of an outrageous WWII deception

When we think of Allied operations in World War II designed to fool the Nazis, most of us think "Normandy." After all, the elaborate efforts to conceal the time and place of D-Day famously included a fake army and hundreds of inflatable tanks, airplanes, and artillery pieces....

read more

Popular Fiction

Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

Ken Follett’s monumental saga of the First World War

No one is still alive with any adult memory of World War I, which ended a century ago. So when we think of the events that have shaped the world we live in today it's likely World War II looms large. But its antecedent three decades earlier may have had greater long-term...

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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!

 

Transcendent Kingdom

Questions science cannot answer in this brilliant new novel

Gifty's big brother Nana, a championship basketball player, was just a few years away from a likely berth in the NBA when he died of a heroin overdose, and her mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, had lain depressed in bed for years. So, it's unsurprising that she herself had turned to a career in...
Cover image of "Black Flags," a history of ISIS

A well-informed history of ISIS

One thing is unmistakably clear nearly from the outset of this outstanding inquiry into the history of ISIS: the bombings, the beheadings, the execution of hundreds of people at a time -- we brought it all on ourselves with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Black Flags, the work of Pulitzer...
The Longest War by Peter L. Bergen

“The Longest War”: The conflict between the U.S. and Al Qaeda

A review of The Longest War: Inside the Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda, by Peter L. Bergen. @@@@ (4 out of 5). An able, one-volume history of the fateful two-decade interaction between Osama bin Laden and his followers with three successive U.S. Administrations.

Cover image of "The Avatar," a novel that portrays a possible future among the stars

Alien life abounds in our starfaring future

This is a big book as science fiction novels go, and it doesn't fit it in any one of the standard categories. First Contact novel? Check. Space opera? Yes. Adventure story? That, too. Travelogue? Even that. Political novel? Oh, yes. But at its hard SF heart, Poul Anderson's The Avatar is a...
Cover image of "Overreach,"

Why the US and China are at odds

Many Americans seem to assume that the current tension between the US and China arose only with the election of Donald Trump in 2016—or with the rise of Xi Jinping to the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) four years earlier. But that's far from the case. In Overreach: How China Derailed Its...
Nighttown is a hilarious crime novel.

A legendary burglar, a beautiful hitwoman, and a seven-foot killer

So, here's the deal. Junior Bender chose to accept a cockamamie proposition to rob a deserted house for entirely too much money. Even knowing someone might try to kill him for taking the job. Junior and his girlfriend, Ronnie Bigelow, "were planning an operation to kidnap her two-year-old son from...

A first novel from a brilliant nonfiction writer

A review of A Theory of Small Earthquakes, by Meredith Maran. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Centers on the decades-long love affair of writer Alison Rose and Zoe, a trust-fund baby and artist given to wearing outrageous clothing and hairstyles and painting large, disturbing canvases.

The Widows of Malabar Hill highlights the Parsi minority.

The first woman lawyer in Bombay solves a baffling mystery

I'll admit it. I enjoy reading mysteries and thrillers, and I have a special preference for historical fiction. But when an author brings the two genres together and does a superior job in both of them, I'm entranced. And that's certainly the case with The Widows of Malabar Hill. Sujata Massey's...
Cover image of "The Guns of August," an example of history at its best

How pride and incompetence launched the war that shaped the 20th century

Among the most momentous events in world history, World War I stands out for the breadth and depth of its consequences. The fighting was a principal cause of the Russian Revolution. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, and Russian empires disintegrated, their monarchs deposed. The United States...
Cover image of "April in Spain," a historical murder mystery

Quirke is back in a new historical murder mystery

Now, here's a historical murder mystery about a murder that never happened. Leave it to John Banville to turn the old trope on its head and produce a compelling novel of suspense in which no one dies until the end. After all, the man won the Booker Award, and he is nothing if not clever. Banville...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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