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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A supersecret US spy sets out to prevent a biowar attack

A supersecret US spy sets out to prevent a biowar attack

Few things pose a greater threat to our peace of mind than the prospect of a terrorist attack with a biological weapon. That theme has powered several high-profile thrillers over recent years, including Richard Preston's The Cobra Event, Stephen King's The Stand, and Spasm by...

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NONFICTION

The far-reaching and surprising impact of World War II

The far-reaching and surprising impact of World War II

Is it too much to say that World War II "changed everything?" In The Fear and the Freedom, author Keith Lowe makes a strong case to justify the claim. As many as 80 million people died of a global population barely 30 times that number in 1939. Perhaps an equal number became...

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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!

 

Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions

The lady cop who fascinated America a century ago

This is not a detective story, despite the fact that it's one in a series of historical novels about New Jersey's first female deputy sheriff (and apparently the first anywhere to carry a gun). Nor is it a thriller or even especially suspenseful. Instead, Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions is a tale...
The Quiet Americans

How the CIA helped set the course for a half-century of US policy

For most readers with a passing interest in espionage, the operations of the CIA beginning in the 1950s are reasonably familiar. But that's not the case of the Agency's work in the years immediately following World War II. Scott Anderson corrects that gap in The Quiet Americans, an illuminating...
Cover image of "The Traitor of Arnhem,"

Shocking revelations about a turning point in World War II

World War II might have ended six months earlier if General Bernard Montgomery's Operation Market Garden had worked. The plan called for American, British, and Polish paratroopers to drop behind German lines in the Netherlands in September 1944. Its objective was to capture the one remaining...
Cover image of "Dark Beauty," a novella about humans trapped in an alien zoo

A clever new twist on an old sci-fi trope

Writers have to earn a buck to put food on the table. Once they're well established as professionals, some grab the opportunity to contract with a deceased author's estate to continue a best-selling series or use some of its characters in works of their own. And the Australian science fiction...
Cover image of "The Eagle Has Landed" by Jack Higgins, a classic espionage thriller

A classic espionage thriller that’s well worth rereading

Any list of the best spy stories of all times must include Jack Higgins' classic World War II espionage thriller, The Eagle Has Landed. Published in 1975, this classic of the genre has sold more than 50 million copies. I read the book shortly after it was first published and turned back to it...
Cover image of "The Collapsing Empire," the beginning of a new John Scalzi series

A promising start to a new John Scalzi series

It's not hard to see why John Scalzi has so many fans in the science fiction community. His writing is unusually accessible, frequently profane, and often funny. If anyone is writing expressly for the proverbial 14-year-old sci-fi fan, it's John Scalzi. And there's just enough of the...

The Yalta controversy and the fate of Poland

Few Americans today remember the name Yalta. But for two generations following the end of World War II, the word conjured up conflicting political visions of the war's outcome. It was there on the shores of the Black Sea that Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met for eight...
The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken features India's #1 private detective.

India’s #1 private detective is an unforgettable character

There are several ways to get to know India. Naturally, you can move there and stay for, say, a couple of dozen years. (Anything much shorter won't do the trick.) You could also read all the travel guides ever written about the country, and that might give you a pretty good sense of the place. Or...
Cover image of "Diamond Solitaire," a novel about a sumo wrestler

A sumo wrestler in a different sort of detective novel

Conventional detective fiction features a brilliant investigator (who may or may not actually be a detective), a horrid crime that he or she is called on to solve (occasionally, by accident), and one or more really nasty people who will (whether or not they appear nasty at the outset) prove to be...
Cover image of "A Burnable Book,"

A plot to assassinate the king in medieval England

Late in the 14th century, England continued to suffer from the factionalism and political instability that had bedeviled the country for centuries. The Black Death was a century in the past, and the population had begun to grow again. The earliest glimmers of the Reformation were introducing...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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