The Latest

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Shiya Ribowsky walked to work. It was a beautiful day, and he was in no hurry. As director of identifications at New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), he knew death keeps its own schedule. Then the first plane struck...

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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

The Lincoln Lawyer takes AI to court

The Lincoln Lawyer takes AI to court

As I write, more than 20 lawsuits have been filed against the company OpenAI over the alleged misbehavior of its chatbot, ChatGPT. (I could find none against Anthropic's Claude.) Doubtless, more will surface as time goes on, especially in the face of fast-growing reports that...

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NONFICTION

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

He ran the morgue on 9/11. The job took years.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Shiya Ribowsky walked to work. It was a beautiful day, and he was in no hurry. As director of identifications at New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), he knew death keeps its own schedule. Then the first plane struck...

read more

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!

 

Transcendent Kingdom

Questions science cannot answer in this brilliant new novel

Gifty's big brother Nana, a championship basketball player, was just a few years away from a likely berth in the NBA when he died of a heroin overdose, and her mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, had lain depressed in bed for years. So, it's unsurprising that she herself had turned to a career in...
Guns, Germs, and Steel helps in gaining a global perspective

Gaining a global perspective on the world around us

I’m sure you’ve found this, too: It’s damnably hard to get a handle on things. Every day, we’re inundated by thousands of bits and pieces of information—online, by mail, on our phones and laptops, and everywhere we walk on the streets of a city or the aisles of a grocery store. How does all this...

Benjamin Black brings back Philip Marlowe

I've never been a fan of books written by contemporary writers using legendary characters created by someone long dead -- but I'm such a big fan of Benjamin Black's Quirke series set in Dublin that I couldn't resist grabbing up his recreation of Raymond Chandler's legendary detective, Philip...
Cover image of "The Immortal King Rao,"

A novel dystopian story that explores anarchism

In her impressive debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, Canadian-American journalist Vauhini Vara probes the heart of the capitalist system with a cold-eyed look at its central premise, the cult of perpetual growth. The eponymous King Rao has "left this world as the most influential person ever to...
Cover image of "Ancillary Justice," a peculiar book.

Why did this peculiar book win both the Nebula and Hugo Awards?

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie was the first novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. I'm trying to figure out why. Let's see if we can suss out what's going on in the story. For starters, every character is referred to as "she" or "her" regardless of whether they...
Cover image of "The Chinese Maze Murders," a Chinese detective novel

A fascinating Chinese detective novel

Robert van Gulik’s series of 16\5 Judge Dee mysteries are set in China sometime during the era of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). They’re grounded in his intensive scholarly study of ancient Chinese detective stories, some of which he has translated into English. The Chinese Maze Murders was the...
The Plot

A plot within a plot within a plot

Writing in the Washington Post (May 16, 2021), Maureen Corrigan says The Plot is "the best thriller of the year (so far)." And according to the book jacket, Stephen King calls it "insanely readable." I wonder why. True, the novel is unusually well written. The plot is clever, the story well-paced...
Cover image of "The Wrong Side of Goodbye," a Harry Bosch novel

An aging Harry Bosch is still in fine form

In The Wrong Side of Goodbye, former LAPD detective Harry Bosch is hired as a private eye to find out whether a reclusive billionaire has an heir related to him by blood. Now well into his 80s, the man had left behind a pregnant underage Mexican girl "on the wrong side of goodbye" when he was a...
Cover image of "From a Far and Lovely Country," a novel about the famous African lady detectives

Down home with the lady detectives again

Here we are again, back with Mma Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of Botswana's #1 Ladies' Detective Agency. And of course all the familiar people in her circle are close at hand as well. Mma Grace Makutsi, self-promoted "co-director" of the agency. Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe's husband,...
Cover image of "City of Secrets," a novel about israeli independence

Inside the fight for Israeli independence

A Latvian Jew freed from imprisonment in World War II internment camps makes his way to Palestine in 1948 and joins the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization that led the fight for Israeli independence. His new name is Jossi. He operates as a courier in Jerusalem, part of a small cell that...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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