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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Skullduggery and murder in the corridors of power

Skullduggery and murder in the corridors of power

Here's a story that will awaken every cynical bone in your body that resonates to the waves of political corruption we see every day in the news. In Girls, Crimes, and the Ruling Body, veteran political operative Barry R. Ziman has written a novel for our time. You have only to...

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NONFICTION

How one of its own librarians tried to kill the KGB

How one of its own librarians tried to kill the KGB

Since early in the 19th century, the men who rule Russia have relied on secret intelligence to preserve their hold on power. Tsar Nicholas I started it all in 1826. The Third Section, which he founded then, grew and morphed over the years, changing names and broadening its...

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Popular Fiction

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

A sprawling Indian family in Delhi confronts its demons

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi died at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. Violence erupted immediately. Anti-Sikh riots raged for four days, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Sikhs. Eight years later, in December 1992, an organized mob of 70,000...

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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!

 

Homophobia, rape, murder in the New South

A review of Blindsighted, by Karin Slaughter. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Blindsighted, set in rural Grant County in Southern Georgia, focuses on Dr. Sara Linton, the 30-something town pediatrician and part-time coroner; her ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, who is Chief of Police; and Lena Adams, a young detective.

Cover image of "How to Rule the World,"

Corruption at the epicenter of Silicon Valley

In 2022, a 17-year-old computer wizard named Theo Baker entered Stanford University. Besotted with idealism, he'd come to California believing that Stanford could enable him to make the world a better place. As a "hobby," he volunteered for the Stanford Daily student newspaper. And over the...

Tea Party politics may not be what you think

A review of Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party, by Lawrence Rosenthal and Christine Trost. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). A superb collection of scholarly articles that examine the Tea Party from many different angles.

great novels of the last five years: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

30 top books about Africa

In the 19th century, as the nations of Europe rushed to grab ever-larger expanses of territory there, Africa was known as the Dark Continent. That label is still apt, but not for the same reason. Everywhere else—Europe, Asia, the Americas—understanding of Africa and Africans is limited, and far...
The Bombay Prince

Murder in Bombay during the Indian independence movement

When Britain's Crown Prince Edward strode through the Gateway of India in Bombay late in 1921, the subcontinent was seething with unrest. Thousands of loyalists turned out to gain a glimpse of the glamorous royal. But the city as a whole was quiet. Civil disobedience championed by Mohandas Gandhi...
A Cold Red Sunrise

A terrific historical murder mystery set in the USSR

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Stuart Kaminsky won the Edgar for Best Novel for A Cold Red Sunrise, and it's easy to see why. The four books that precede it in his long-running series featuring Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov are all excellent. But he outdoes himself with this fascinating...
Cover image of "The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine," a novel about lady detectives

You’ll love this charming little novel about lady detectives

Several years ago the BBC and HBO co-produced a short-lived television series based on the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series. If your impression of those books and the characters featured in them was colored by watching TV, please forget everything you saw and read the books themselves. There are...
Cover image of "Deadwood,"

Debunking the myths of the Wild West

For three seasons early in this century, HBO aired Deadwood, which won more than two dozen Emmy Awards. The series starred Timothy Olyphant as businessman and lawman Seth Bullock and Ian McShane as Al Swearengen, the violent criminal proprietor of a saloon and brothel. Other leading characters...
Cover image of "The Woman Who Smashed Codes" by Jason Fagone, a book about a famous woman codebreaker

The woman codebreaker who caught gangsters and Nazi spies

When Richard Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier famously said, "It's too early to tell." That terse response is generally understood to illustrate the Chinese ability to take the long view of history. But it might be more accurate to...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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