When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, an estimated 50 million people lived in the Hemisphere. Somewhere between seven and 18 million of them inhabited North America. By 1890, the population of indigenous people in the United States had been reduced to 248,000. Countless millions had...
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China has suffered through a series of titanic convulsions over the past two centuries. The Opium Wars, when the West seized control of the country. The Taiping Rebellion, which killed thirty million, and the Boxer Rebellion, when the West occupied Beijing. Fall of the Qing Dynasty. Japanese...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Sasha Tkach and Emil Karpo (“the Vampire”) are in Moscow, on the trail of a Russian serial killer with multiple personality disorder. And Karpo is also looking into the death of the Kazakhstani foreign minister, allegedly of natural causes. Meanwhile,...
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Alternate history is a curious branch of science fiction—or, perhaps more properly, of speculative fiction. Because the factors that limit the author’s imagination aren’t the boundaries of science but those of history itself: reality. To work, alternate history must be believable...
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Belgian author Georges Simenon set a dubious record with the publication of 75 novels in his series about Paris police commissioner Jules Maigret. The Maigret novels are widely regarded as the longest-running series of crime novels ever written. But those 75 books constituted less than one-fifth...
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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.