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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 "Serious Men," a satirical novel about India today

A comic novel about India today, and Big Science, too

A review of Serious Men, by Manu Joseph. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). In his debut novel, Indian magazine editor Manu Joseph takes on the caste system, Big Science, love, marriage, and sex, corruption in government, the news media, office politics, loyalty and betrayal, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and the fate of the Universe — yet it all hangs together somehow. This is Black Comedy, Indian-style.

Cover image of "The One from the Other," a novel about an anti-Nazi detective in Hitler's Germany

An anti-Nazi detective in Hitler’s Germany

Both U.S. critics and the British public seem to love Philip Kerr, but I can't quite figure out why. Oh, Kerr's good, all right. I can understand why they like him. It's just that love seems a little over the top. Kerr's plotting is complex and full of tension and ultimate surprise, and his...
unconventional thriller: The Prophet by Michael Koryta

Looking for an unconventional thriller? Read this book

A review of The Prophet, by Michael Koryta. @@@@ (4 out of 5). A tale of two brothers whose lives are dominated by football and by the senseless murder of their sister 22 years ago. A homicide, all too reminiscent of their sister’s, shocks them both into reliving the event.

The Black Dahlia murder is the centerpiece of this novel.

A classic crime novel about LA’s unsolved Black Dahlia murder

No history of Los Angeles is complete without at least a passing reference to the Black Dahlia murder in 1947, when a young woman named Elizabeth Short was brutally tortured, murdered, and mutilated. The case dominated the press for weeks and left a lasting imprint on the city's image of itself. A...
Wife of the Gods

A fetish priest, an herbal healer, and a murdered AIDS outreach worker

The West African nation of Ghana boasts one of the continent's most vibrant economies. Many of the 2.5 million people who live in and around the capital city of Accra enjoy a comfortable existence. Thousands work in modern high-rise buildings with air conditioning and other conveniences we in the...
Cover image of "The Duel," an account of the early days of World War II

When Churchill faced Hitler alone

On May 10, 1940, two historic events grabbed the world's attention. Hitler's Panzer armies broke through the Belgian and Dutch frontiers. And King George VI asked Winston Churchill to form a new government. To tell the story of the eighty days that followed, historian John Lukacs frames the...
The Ark

On a starship, an art heist, a murder, a coverup

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes The premise is familiar. The remnants of the human race crowd aboard a spaceship en route for centuries to a new home amid the stars. Somehow, far behind them in space and time, the Earth's billions have perished. Yet never before have I come across a rendering of...
Cover image of "Clark and Division,"

Murder strikes a WWII Japanese American family

Aki Ito arrives in Chicago with her family in January 1944 expecting to find her glamorous big sister, Rose, waiting for them. Finally, the family is reuniting after two years in the desert concentration camp of Manzanar. But Rose is missing. And all too soon, Aki learns that her beloved sister...
Cover image of "Sparring Partners," a novel about lawyers behaving badly

John Grisham depicts lawyers behaving badly

Don't pick up John Grisham's latest book expecting another novel in the ongoing saga of Jake Brigance, even though it's described as the fourth in that series. Sparring Partners is a collection of three unrelated novellas that probe John Grisham's favorite theme: lawyers and the legal system...

A brilliant novel of the French Resistance

Alan Furst homes in on the French Resistance in Red Gold, the fifth of the 13 novels in his "Night Soldiers" series that have been appearing regularly since 1988. His mastery of the moods and the political environment in Europe before and during the Second World War is unexcelled, and the flawed,...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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