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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

The best spy novelists writing today

The best spy novelists writing today

The first espionage novels appeared early in the 19th century with the publication of James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy in 1821 and The Bravo in 1831. A few other notable titles were published in the ensuing decades, and Sherlock Holmes got into the act around the turn...

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NONFICTION

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

Roger Ailes: the man who built Fox News and divided America

As a teenager growing up in the 1950s in Lima, Ohio, (population 50,000 then), I learned that our local daily, The Lima News, had been purchased by a man named R. C. Hoiles. Hoiles lived in Orange County, California, and was a member of the John Birch Society. He owned a chain...

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Popular Fiction

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Love, disease, and self-deception: the life of Typhoid Mary

Shortly after the 19th century turned into the 20th, a medical sleuth named George Soper, whom we would today call an epidemiologist, identified a young Irish immigrant cook in New York City as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen that causes typhoid fever. Her name was Mary...

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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!

 

Red April

The brutal legacy of terrorism in the Andes

Most Americans today associate international terrorism with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their many radical Islamist offspring and imitators. Sadly, though, these groups are just the latest examples of a perverted indulgence in violence that has cropped up all over the world since the 1960s. The...
Cover image of "Last Days in Shanghai," a thriller that doesn't quite thrill

A thriller that doesn’t quite thrill

At 24, Luke Slade is mourning the end of his relationship with his girlfriend, Alex, when his boss takes him on a trip to China. Luke is a top aide to Republican Congressman Leonard (Leo) Fillmore, whose questionable ethics have allowed him to make the journey courtesy of a shadowy billionaire, a...
Cover image of "Kill the Messenger," a book about mass media and the fate of the world

Mass media and the fate of the world

A review of Kill the Messenger: The Media’s Role in the Fate of the World, by Maria Armoudian. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). In Kill the Messenger, political scientist and radio broadcaster Maria Armoudian ably examines the central role of mass media in human affairs over the course of the 20th Century.

Our Country Friends

Is this the Great American Pandemic Novel?

Here we have a great example of what happens when a brilliant comic writer decides to get "serious." I've read four, and reviewed three, of Gary Shteyngart's previous books. I loved the novels Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story and his memoir, Little Failure. I tolerated his later novel,...
Mick Herron's misfit spies star again in London Rules.

MI5’s misfit spies outdo themselves in this very funny novel

Ever since World War II, espionage has been a favorite topic of thriller writers. Authors such as Eric Ambler and Graham Greene set the tone, and some of their novels are regarded as classics of the genre to this day. In the years since their heyday (the 1930s and 40s), the genre has veered off in...
Cover image of "Wake Up and Dream," an alternate history of Hollywood

This thriller is an alternate history of Hollywood

Hollywood, June 1944. Europe is still at war, with England about to fall to Hitler's legions. In the United States, FDR readies a run for a third term as the fascist Liberty League gains ground across the land. Everywhere, people are flocking to the theaters to take in the newest "feelies,"...
Cover image of "Being Mortal," a book by Atul Gawande

From Atul Gawande: How to deal with death and dying

Like a lot of Americans, I do my utmost to avoid talking, or even thinking, about death and dying. Maybe I'm just too close to the inevitable at 73 years of age as I write. Atul Gawande, the brilliant Indian-American physician and New Yorker writer, is clearly nowhere near my age, but in Being...
Cover image of "The Storm Murders," a baffling murder mystery

A baffling murder mystery set in Quebec

When two rural police officers arrive in a snowstorm at an isolated house in the Quebec countryside to investigate a double murder, both quickly fall victim themselves. A retired Montreal City investigator, Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, receives a visit from his former partner and an unknown...
Half of a Yellow Sun is one of the top 10 historical novels of the decade.

The decade’s top 10 historical novels, mysteries & thrillers, and science fiction

Here you'll find my lists of the top 10 historical novels as well as the top 10 mysteries & thrillers and top 10 science fiction novels of the decade from 2010 to 2019. I’ve reviewed them all here. The books are listed alphabetically by the authors’ last names within each category, and each...
Cover image of "Invisible Things,"

A satirical science fiction novel about life on Europa

You'll get a sense of what Mat Johnson is driving at on the second page of his satirical science fiction novel, Invisible Things. There, sociologist and astronaut Nalini Jackson muses about what another science fiction author termed life, the universe, and everything. "If humanity achieved...

My Most Popular Reviews

Weekly Reviews Delivered to You!

Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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Mal Warwick

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