The Latest

SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Travis McGee wades into a sordid case of group sex and murder

Travis McGee wades into a sordid case of group sex and murder

Before there was Jack Reacher, there was Travis McGee. Lee Child, who created Reacher, has never been shy about the debt he owes. Neither have Carl Hiaasen, Dean Koontz, and a long list of other bestselling writers. Between 1964 and 1985, John D. MacDonald wrote 21 novels about...

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NONFICTION

The man who taught Donald Trump everything he knows

The man who taught Donald Trump everything he knows

It's difficult to imagine how any single American over the past 100 years could have done more damage to our country than Roy Cohn. Even Senator Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump may bear less responsibility for the harm they've done to millions of lives, because to a great...

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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!

 

Cover image of "How Democracies Die" by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, which asks is American democracy dying

Two government professors ask, is American democracy dying?

Over the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do things that are unprecedented in the United States—but that we recognize as having been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many other Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that...
Walking Shadows is the 25th Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus novel.

Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus are all grown up in Faye Kellerman’s latest

One of the pleasures of reading novels in a long-running series is the opportunity to watch the protagonists' growth. Faye Kellerman launched the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series in 1986 with the publication of The Ritual Bath. Now, more than thirty years later, comes Walking Shadows, the...
Cover image of "The Secret Place," a novel characterized by magical style

Magical style and tedious plotting in Tana French’s latest

Every writer can have a bad day (or a bad year), and it would appear that Tana French was having one when she wrote The Secret Place. Oh, I read the whole thing, anyway. It's hard to resist writing like this: "Alison's mum has had a lot of plastic surgery and she wears fake eyelashes the size of...
The misuse of metrics is the theme of "The Tyranny of Metrics" by Jerry Z. Muller

Every manager should read this book about the use and misuse of metrics

I was not surprised by historian Jerry Z. Muller's comments about "metric fixation" in his illuminating new book, The Tyranny of Metrics. Some years ago the chairman and CEO of a Fortune 500 company remarked to me that nobody, not even Jack Welch, the then-idolized leader of General Electric,...
Cover image of "World Gone By, a suspenseful historical novel

Suspenseful historical fiction that’s hard to put down

Here is a masterful piece of historical fiction from a veteran novelist with extraordinary talent. World Gone By, written by Dennis Lehane, follows the interior struggle of a man with a tragic past he cannot escape and an uncertain future. In her review of the book in The New York Times,...
Cover image of "Barkskins," a novel about disappearing forests

A sad tale of disappearing forests

Sixteen ninety-three. New France (later eastern Canada). Two indentured servants from the old country, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, have arrived to start work felling trees in the wilderness on behalf of a titled Frenchman. Over the subsequent 320 years, the innumerable descendants of the two men...
Cover image of "Tai-Pan," a novel about the founding of Hong Kong

A swashbuckling story of the founding of Hong Kong

In May 1817, a Scottish physician named William Jardine (1784-1843) abandoned his post as a surgeon's mate on a British East India Company ship and settled in Canton to take up life as a merchant. Over the succeeding years, he prospered in the opium trade and, in 1832, cofounded the...
Cover image of "The House of Unexpected Sisters," a novel in the series about a ladies detective agency

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is on the case

For sheer charm, it's hard to beat Alexander McCall Smith's delightful series of novels about the #1 Ladies Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana. (If you know where Botswana is, much less anything else about it, go to the head of the class.) The 18th entry in this ongoing series is a case in...
The Wrong Stars is a space travel tale.

This space travel tale is just so-so

What sets apart a great science fiction novel from one that's just so-so? By so-so, I mean a story that works reasonably well, smoothly moving from beginning to end and creating suspense along the way. But that so-so novel doesn't stand out in any particular way — not by demonstrating exceptional...
Cover image of "Mission to Paris,"

At the dawn of World War II, a Hollywood star becomes a spy

Alan Furst writes deeply engrossing novels of suspense about espionage in Europe in the years leading up to and during World War II. Mission to Paris, the 12th of these books, is good enough to satisfy the most exacting fans of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. It's difficult to accept the fact...

My Most Popular Reviews

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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