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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

A young police detective pursues an escaped Nazi spy

Nazi Germany reportedly dispatched as many as 135 spies to Britain during World War II. And, according to numerous historical accounts, every single one of them was either captured or turned themselves in to authorities. (At least one didn't fit the pattern, though. He...

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NONFICTION

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 "The Shape of Water," a novel by Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri writes about murder in Sicily. What else is new?

There's little of that celebrated Italian charm in The Shape of Water, the first novel by Andrea Camilleri in his widely-read series of crime stories featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The book is set in the town of Vigata in Sicily, where corruption reigns supreme and murder is nothing out of...
The Midnight Witness is by Denmark's favorite author.

Denmark’s favorite author disappoints with her latest novel

She may be Denmark's favorite author, but the latest entry in her series of detective novels is disappointing. The Midnight Witness is a police procedural, and like so many other stories in that category, the cast is large. Other authors such as Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, and Joseph Wambaugh...
Cover image of "A Kind of Freedom" by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, a powerful family drama.

A powerful family drama about living with Jim Crow

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton opens her debut novel with a poignant quote from Edward P. Jones' book of short stories, All Aunt Hagar's Children: "They were the children of once-upon-a-time slaves, born into a kind of freedom, but they had traveled down through the wombs with what all their kind had...
Hawksbill Station gets lots of things wrong about the future.

A science fiction Grand Master gets it wrong about the future

Some would say science fiction writers are notorious for getting things wrong about the future. After all, there are few examples of important developments in science or technology that any science fiction author can credibly claim to have predicted. Yes, Arthur C. Clarke famously foresaw...
Cover image of "Library," a history of libraries of sorts.

An impressionistic history of libraries and librarians through the ages

I have no idea what an "unquiet" history might be as promised in this book's subtitle. But if you've picked up a copy of Library in hopes of reading a history of libraries through the ages, you'll be disappointed. For example, although author Matthew Battles is American, he has not seen fit to...
Cover image of "The Whitehall Mandarin," a novel about nuclear espionage

In the early days of the Cold War, nuclear espionage in search of the H-bomb

The Whitehall Mandarin, Edward Wilson's complex and sophisticated novel of Cold War espionage, is the fourth book in a series that began with the The Envoy. That first book centered around the life of one Kit Fournier, an American intelligence officer who rose to become head of the CIA mission in...
Cover image of "Sand," a novel with a new perspective on dystopia

Dystopian fiction from a fresh new perspective

Well over a century after Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, you might think that science fiction writers would run out of new material. In fact, some have: they write traditional space operas or dystopian novels that give the genre a bad name, oblivious to the fact that these themes were worked to...
Deep Freeze is the latest Virgil Flowers novel.

Murder most foul and sex toys in the latest Virgil Flowers novel

On the first page of the latest Virgil Flowers novel we learn that David Birkmann is a killer. "He'd gotten away with it, he thought." Naturally, since we also know that Virgil will be called on to investigate the murder, we're perfectly well aware that David most certainly will not get away with...
Cover image of "Cetaganda" by Lois McMaster Bujold, a novel in which the Vorkosigan Saga continues

Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga continues

Much of classic science fiction consisted of what came to be called "space opera"—and most of it was junk. With some notable exceptions, the format is rarely used today. However, the multiple-award-winner Lois McMaster Bujold has updated the space opera with a long (and ongoing) series of novels,...
Cover image of "Undermajordomo Minor" by Patrick DeWitt, one of the strangest tales I've read in years

The strangest tale I’ve read in years, and it’s not science fiction

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes It's hard to know what to make of this curious little novel by Patrick DeWitt. Undermajordomo Minor is unquestionably the strangest tale I've read in years—and I read a great deal of science fiction, much of which is surpassingly strange. (No, this is...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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