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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A Tang Dynasty judge solves a string of baffling murders

A Tang Dynasty judge solves a string of baffling murders

For readers in the USA or Europe, it can be a challenge to understand law enforcement policies and procedures in countries grounded in non-Western values and assumptions. In China, for example. The Inspector Chen novels of the Chinese expatriate author Qiu Xiaolong show just...

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NONFICTION

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

A soldier helped build America’s Empire. Then he spoke out.

Few know his name today. But over a 34-year military career, Marine officer Smedley Butler (1881-1940) was for long America's most famous soldier. He fought in the Philippine–American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and all of the USA's imperial...

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Popular Fiction

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

Laughs in sci-fi? P. G. Wodehouse did humor better.

The legendary English humorist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975), known to readers as P. G., wrote about 100 books in a career that spanned much of the 20th century. His output included 71 novels, 24 collections of short stories, 42 plays, three memoirs, and a lot...

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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.

Check out our rotating random selection here, culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

The Catch involves that billionaire who committed suicide in prison.

About that billionaire who committed suicide in prison

Any veteran reader of mysteries has long since learned that something or someone randomly mentioned out of place early in a story will invariably turn out to be very, very important. Alfred Hitchcock called it a MacGuffin. So, your antennae are likely to wiggle frantically when you stumble upon a...
Rogue Protocol features sci-fi's favorite antisocial A.I.

Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. surfaces again in the Murderbot Diaries

Martha Wells has been writing science fiction since 1995 and was nominated for major awards in the field on several occasions. But her breakthrough came in 2018 when she won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and the American Library Association's Alex Award for All Systems Red. That book kicked off what is...
Cover image of "The Crow Girl," a novel about pedophiles and serial murderers

Pedophiles, serial murder, and the Holocaust

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes If you favor mysteries and thrillers full of surprises, you'll love The Crow Girl by the Swedish writing team that publishes under the name Erik Axl Sund. No matter how shrewd and analytical you might be, I predict that you won't figure out who's who and what's...
Cover image of "The Relic Master," one of the satirical novels Christopher Buckley writes

Christopher Buckley writes satirical novels that are very, very funny

It's no accident that Christopher Buckley writes such funny satirical novels. He is, pure and simple, a very funny man. I know this not just because I've read his books, which generally "kept me in stitches" (whatever that means), but also because I actually spent much of an evening with him not...
Cover image of "Demon Copperhead," a novel about the drug epidemic

An engrossing novel of the drug epidemic

Charles Dickens's semi-autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, appeared in 1850. The book, his favorite among the nineteen novels he published during his lifetime, plumbed the depths of his difficult upbringing in Victorian England. It has been adapted to film or television fourteen times over...
Cover image of "The Engines of God," a novel about the discovery of alien artifacts

Archaeologists explore alien artifacts among the stars

He is credited with at least twenty-six science fiction novels and seven collections of short stories. And Stephen King reportedly called him "the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke." So, I have to believe that The Engines of God is an outlier in Jack McDevitt's writing career....
Cover image of "The Avatar," a novel that portrays a possible future among the stars

Alien life abounds in our starfaring future

This is a big book as science fiction novels go, and it doesn't fit it in any one of the standard categories. First Contact novel? Check. Space opera? Yes. Adventure story? That, too. Travelogue? Even that. Political novel? Oh, yes. But at its hard SF heart, Poul Anderson's The Avatar is a...
Cover image of "SAS Ghost Patrol,"

Adventures and mishaps of the original special forces

When Winston Churchill launched the storied Special Operations Executive (SOE) on June 13, 1940, just a month had passed since he moved into 10 Downing Street. Yet France had fallen to Hitler's minions and the British Expeditionary Force had barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk. But the SOE came...
Cover image of "Four Treasures of the Sky," which is among the best popular fiction of 2022

The best popular fiction of 2022

For the record, what follows is not a list of the best popular fiction published during the past year. Instead, I’ve rejected the practice of those reviewers who imply they've read and reviewed the many thousands of popular (or trade) novels published in any given year. (I...
Cover image of "The Fourth Durango" by Ross Thomas, a novel about skullduggery

From Ross Thomas, another take on small-town skullduggery

The late Ross Thomas wrote twenty-five novels about crime, espionage, politics, and corruption between 1966 and his death at age sixty-nine in 1995. No two are alike, and every one of them is a gem. Many revel in skullduggery. They brim over with wit, insight, brilliant characterization, and...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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…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.

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