Estimated reading time: 4 minutes Paris, May 1940. A Jewish furrier has just converted most of his wealth into diamonds. As he prepares to leave France, with the Nazis on the outskirts of the city, he is brutally murdered by an intruder. Three and a half years later, a young Polish woman meets her...
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You’ll get a sense of what Mat Johnson is driving at on the second page of his satirical science fiction novel, Invisible Things. There, sociologist and astronaut Nalini Jackson muses about what another science fiction author termed life, the universe, and everything. “If humanity...
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Sixteen eighty-eight is familiar to many English-speakers as the year of Britain’s Glorious Revolution, when William of Orange invaded England and restored the primacy of the Protestant religion in the nation’s affairs. But University of Southern California historian John E. Wills Jr....
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Award-winning Chicago-based mystery author Stuart Kaminsky wrote sixteen police procedurals featuring an honest Russian detective named Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. The first of these novels, Death of a Dissident, appeared in 1981 and depicted crime in the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev....
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Dystopian novels range across a spectrum from realism to absurdity. No one could regard the most famous of the lot as realistic depictions of any recognizable future. Brave New World, 1984, and The Handmaid’s Tale are works of literature, taking poetic license to drive home the...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.