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MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

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For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

For a century, the spy next door has been a reality

Every self-respecting spy service equips agents with false credentials and dispatches them to conduct espionage illegally in other nations. But one country has been doing so for far longer and on a dramatically bigger scale than all the others. And the practice started more...

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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.

Look to the right for a rotating random selection culled from throughout this site.

Happy reading!

 

Cover image of "That Dangerous Energy," a novel about tackling climate change

Tackling climate change—in bed

Readers may know Aya de León as the author of the four books published to date in her Justice Hustlers series of thrillers. Four have appeared to date among her eleven novels. But all her work so far shares an outspoken progressive perspective and highlights an activist approach to today's social...
"Binti" is the Binti Trilogy book one.

An African student travels to the stars in the first book of the Binti Trilogy

You'll love Binti. In the first book of the trilogy that bears her name, she sets out at the age of sixteen for Oomza Uni on a distant planet. "None of my family had wanted me to go," she notes. Oomza Uni "was the top of the top, its population was only 5 percent human . . . [and Binti] was the...
Cover image of "The Wright Brothers," a book about the Wright Brothers

The true (and surprising) story of the Wright Brothers

In a world awash with praise for digital pioneers such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, it's all too easy to forget some of the extraordinary people who have shaped our world through business. We remember Thomas Edison, of course: the harnessing of electricity is impossible to overlook. But we recall...
Cover image of "All the Sinners Bleed," a novel classified as Southern noir

Southern noir at its eloquent best

Blood and tears. Violence and mayhem. Love and hate. These were the rocks upon which the South was built. They were the foundation upon which Charon County stood." So writes S. A. Cosby at the outset of his disquieting new crime novel, All the Sinners Bleed. This is Southern noir at its eloquent...
The Social Labs Revolution is about what makes social change happen.

What makes social change happen?

Planning based-approaches -- so common across government, civil society, and even business -- represent a neo-Soviet paradigm" and have long been shown to be at best minimally effective in fostering meaningful social change. If that assertion is a revelation to you, you're sure to find The Social...
Cover image of "Dressed for Death," a novel about corruption in Venice

Donna Leon writes again about corruption in Venice

In 1992, at the age of 50, a professor of English literature named Donna Leon published Death at La Fenice. The novel won a major award and set her off on writing a series of sequels, now numbering 25. Set in Venice, where Leon has been living for the past 25 years, these skillful police...
A Night at Camp David is a novel that anticipated Donald Trump.

A novel that anticipated Donald Trump, five decades ago?

Its title is Night of Camp David, but the publisher topped off the cover with a teaser page to emphasize the novel's relevance to the madness in Washington today. "What would happen if the President of the U.S.A. went stark-raving mad?" the teaser reads. The implication is that this novel...
Cover image of "Above Suspicion,"

A classic World War II spy story

She was Graham Greene and Eric Ambler's contemporary, and all her nearly two dozen spy novels were bestsellers. (Four were adapted to film: Above Suspicion, Assignment in Brittany, The Venetian Affair, and The Salzburg Connection.) In books that appeared from 1941 to 1984, Helen MacInnes explored...
Cover image of "Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen," a nontraditional love story

A nontraditional love story in the Vorkosigan Saga

Surprise! Admiral Aral Vorkosigan was bisexual. Yes, the former Regent and Prime Minister to the young Emperor Gregor, Viceroy of Sergyar, the feared Count Vorkosigan, was bisexual. And the Admiral and his equally formidable wife of more than four decades, Cordelia Naismith, lived in a virtual...
Cover image of "The Bandit Queens," a story of murder in an Indian village

You’ll laugh about these murders in an Indian village

You're not likely to find yourself laughing out loud in a typical story about murder. Oh, there are those authors who set out to write crime novels with a smile or a chuckle on every page. Carl Hiaasen or Janet Evanovich, for example. But Parini Shroff doesn't write like that. Though her debut...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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