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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A murder and a cover-up jump-start this Travis McGee thriller

A murder and a cover-up jump-start this Travis McGee thriller

From 1964 to 1985 a World War II veteran officer and Harvard MBA named John D. MacDonald published a series of 21 remarkable short crime novels centered on a "Florida beach bum" named Travis McGee. Travis, of course, was MacDonald's alter ego, with an incisive mind, a head for...

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NONFICTION

How a team of rebel Tories ousted Neville Chamberlain

How a team of rebel Tories ousted Neville Chamberlain

You may have the impression that Winston Churchill stood alone in warning England of the rising Nazi menace. Many histories of the period paint that picture. But it's not accurate. In fact, a group of younger Conservative MPs were vocal opponents of the Tory Establishment's...

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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!

 

Cover image of "A Divided Spy" by Charles Cumming, a latter-day John le Carre

The latest from a latter-day John le Carre

The British espionage novelist Charles Cumming is sometimes compared to John le Carre, who is 40 years older. Le Carre writes in the same genre but is celebrated as the author of several novels regarded as among the best ever written. I'm usually suspicious of such analogies. But this one is apt....
Cover image of "Fall of a Cosmonaut," about a crime aboard a Russian space station

Politics and intrigue bedevil the police in Yeltsin’s Russia

From 1986 to 2001, the massive Russian space station Mir ("peace") hurtled around the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour, circling the planet approximately every hour and a half. Usually, three cosmonauts lived aboard for periods lasting from several months to over a year. Cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka...
Cover image of "Sell Us the Rope,"

When Stalin was a young revolutionary

How do you humanize a monster? Perhaps if you dig deeply into his early years, when he was a young revolutionary. As a thug, a bank robber, a killer, to be sure. But decades before he became the all-powerful mass murderer who starved millions of Ukrainians to death, sent millions more to the gulag...
crusading Russian journalist: Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith

A crusading Russian journalist and the Mafia

Like so many mystery fans, I met Arkady Renko in 1981 when he first appeared in Martin Cruz Smith's brilliant, best-selling novel of suspense, Gorky Park. Seven more tales about the troubled Russian crime investigator have followed at intervals of three years or more. I've read nearly all of them;...
Cover image of "Wired" by Douglas E. Richards, a bestselling science fiction novel

A bestselling science fiction novel that doesn’t measure up

Amazon boasts that this book was the #1 bestseller for an entire year in both technothrillers and science fiction. I don't think this speaks well for the reading taste of Amazon's customers. Wired is the first of two novels in Douglas E. Richards' series about a near-future breakthrough in...
Freedom's Detective is about the man who fought the Ku Klux Klan—and won.

The first man who fought the Ku Klux Klan—and won

Today's Ku Klux Klan is not what is used to be. In its first incarnation following the Civil War (1865-1871), the Klan was a terrorist organization of a sort all too familiar to us in the 21st century. The Klan attracted tens of thousands of men, primarily in the Deep South, who lamented the...
The Bangkok Asset by John Burdett, the sixth entry in the Royal Thai series.

Murder mystery meets science fiction in Bangkok

There are five previous novels in John Burdett's Royal Thai series featuring Bangkok police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and every one of them is strange. The detective is a devout Buddhist (a former monk) and prey to the supernatural fantasies so common in Thailand. In some of the books,...
Cover image of "Day of Deceit," a book that purports to tell the truth about Pearl Harbor

Uncovering the truth about Pearl Harbor

When you challenge the historical consensus fundamental to our understanding of the past, you'd better be prepared for trouble. And that's exactly what Robert Stinnett got when he published Day of Deceit, purporting to tell the truth about Pearl Harbor. Picking up on a charge long ago rejected by...
The roach patrol and a Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

A severed arm, a detective on the roach patrol, and a bad monkey

A review of Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen. @@@@ (4 out of 5). Another funny Florida crime story from one of the masters of American humor in print.

Cover image of "The Glass Palace" by Amitav Ghosh, an Indian author

From a brilliant Indian author, a sweeping historical novel set in Burma

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes The brilliant Indian author Amitav Ghosh is one of India's greatest gifts to readers the world over. His deeply affecting historical novels relate the history of South Asia in fascinating detail, reflecting years of intensive research, both on-site and archival....

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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