The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A compelling thriller full of surprises

A compelling thriller full of surprises

Ariel Pryce awakens to a sunny day in Lisbon only to find her new husband, John Wright, missing. After hours waiting for him to turn up, it's clear something's amiss. There's no message, and no sign of him whatsoever. Fearing he's fallen victim to an accident or been kidnapped,...

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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 brilliant Indian novel about the First Opium War

A brilliant Indian novel about the First Opium War

Balzac (and lots of people after him) thought that "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Nowhere is that aphorism more baldly pictured than in the 19th Century opium trade that enriched England, Scotland, and the United States. There, trade in the drug created a score...

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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 "The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom," a book about US China relations

A revealing history of U.S.-China relations

Some Americans seem to have the impression that the U.S. relationship with China began in 1972 when Richard Nixon flew to Beijing. In The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, journalist and long-time Beijing resident John Pomfret puts this mistaken impression decisively to rest. In truth, the...
Reverse Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble

Reverse Innovation: The guide to “the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid”

A review of Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere, by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. @@@ (3 out of 5). Here is the book that C. K. Prahalad should have written instead of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Cover image of "Caesar's Last Breath," a book about the air we breathe

An eye-opening book about air

Ever heard of dichlorodifluoromethane? (That's CCl2F2 to you chemistry students.) Well, guess what? You inhale seven trillion molecules of the stuff every time you breathe. Yes, it's in the air we breathe. That's just one of the lesser revelations in Sam Kean's eye-opening and thoroughly...
Last Looks is a satirical Hollywood detective novel.

An inventive Hollywood detective novel written by a veteran screenwriter

Should we be surprised that Hollywood has been the subject of so much satire? Frankly, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't be. The place is soaked in money, it's a magnet for people seeking fame and fortune, and it's virtually infested with ambitious writers. So, when another one of their number...
Cover image of "Slow Horses," an example of British satire

British satire about misfit spies in MI5

The spies who work out of Slough House are "a post-useful crew of misfits [who] can be stored and left to gather dust." Every one of them. MI5 has dumped them all there after they screwed up royally. Now they labor at menial tasks under the direction of a misanthropic ex-operative named Jackson...
Cover image of "The Devils of Cardona," a historical novel set in Spain

A gripping historical thriller set in early modern Spain

The Devils of Cardona is historical fiction masked as a novel of suspense. It works beautifully on both levels. A thrilling historical novel set in Spain, it's set in 1594, more than a century after Ferdinand and Isabella set in motion the Spanish Inquisition. Six years earlier, the English had...
Cover image of "Pardonable Lies" by Jacqueline Winspear, a novel about the legacy of war

Maisie Dobbs: living the legacy of World War I

Before the advent of World War II, the "Great War" -- World War I, the "war to end all wars" -- was the most tragic event in modern history. Earlier, Attila's rampage through Asia and Europe was probably more traumatic. However, in the early decades of the twentieth century, as the Continent's...
Cover image of "The Bucharest Dossier," a spy novel about the Romanian Revolution

A spy thriller set during the tumultuous Romanian Revolution

On Christmas Day, 1989, Romania's long-time Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, were summarily executed by a firing squad after a two-hour sham trial. Thus came to an end forty-two years of Communist rule in the country. But, unlike the transfer of power in other East...
Sacred and Profane highlights Orthodox Jewish religious practices.

The Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus novels highlight Orthodox Jewish religious practices

Check out current lists of popular mystery novels, and you'll find many written by authors whose first language isn't English, or who don't speak or write English at all. (I'm referring to those whose works are translated into English.) "International" detective stories and thrillers now crowd the...
Cover image of "Red Rising," a sci-fi novel about Roman gods in the future

Roman gods in the 30th Century?

Red Rising, and its two sequels in the trilogy of the same name, have been hailed as the equal of the Hunger Games Trilogy. The series' hero, Darrow, has been likened to Ender Wiggin of Orson Scott Card's classic four-book science fiction series as well as Katniss Everdeen of the Hunger Games. I...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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