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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

A brilliant addition to a long-running thriller series

Leonard Summers; his wife, Martha; and son, Bernard, are moving into a remote cabin in Minnesota. But his name isn't Leonard Summers. It's Leonid Sokolov. And "he was in some kind of enforcement branch of the Russian spy agency," Lucas Davenport explains to fellow US Marshal...

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NONFICTION

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

How Adolf Hitler raised the money to finance his rise

From its early days following World War I, what Hitler later renamed the Nazi Party had a powerful political sponsor behind the scenes: the Thule Society. Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw notes that the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi...

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Popular Fiction

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

She was a pioneering astronomer. In the 18th century.

Women did not begin to gain any measure of equality with men until sometime in the 20th century. So it is always inspiring to read about women whose accomplishments were so outstanding that even under the most egregious pressure of misogyny they made their mark on history. One...

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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 "The Windfall," a novel about class envy

Sudden wealth, arranged marriages, and class envy in India today

In The Windfall, the debut novel from Indian writer and actress Diksha Basu, a struggling middle-aged, middle-class Delhi family strikes it rich and moves across town to a wealthy neighborhood in the suburb of Gurgaon. Anil Jha had strained for years to build an online business, earning just...
Cover image of "The Fifties,"

They fought for change in the 1950s

We look upon the 1950s as a decade of conformity when little of consequence happened in the United States. But sweeping generalizations about any period in history are misleading at best, and none more so than about the Fifties. Because the period from the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950...
Cover image of "Wolves Eat Dogs," a book about Chernobyl

Martin Cruz Smith addresses what really happened at Chernobyl

Over the years, I made two trips to the Soviet Union. The first time was in 1965, in the course of a four-month knockabout through the USSR, Eastern and Central Europe, and Scandinavia before my Peace Corps service started. (That was the trip during which I was threatened by submachinegun-toting...
Cover image of "The Riddle of the Labyrinth," a book about the quest to crack the Linear B code.

“The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code”

You might think that an historical account about scholars exploring an intellectual challenge would be deadly dull. In most cases, that's likely to be true. But Margalit Fox's tale in The Riddle of the Labyrinth is anything but that. As the subtitle hints, "The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code" is...
Cover image of "Indonesia, Etc.," a book about Indonesia today

A brilliant, muIti-dimensional picture of Indonesia today

If you're like most Americans, chances are you know little or nothing about Indonesia. Yet that island nation is the world's fourth largest by population (after China, India, and the USA) and fifteenth largest by land area (just after Mexico). It also is home to the world's largest population of...

Join archaeologists at work around the world

To say that Annalee Newitz's interests are eclectic grossly understates the point. They—Newitz's personal pronouns are they/their/theirs—are the author of two science fiction novels and two works of nonfiction that sprawl across a broad swath of issues and preoccupations. Newitz has also edited or...
Eisenhower

An illuminating portrayal of President Eisenhower

The earthshaking events of the 1960s and the cataclysm of World War II have led many of us to think about the 1950s as a boring period when little of importance happened. It was a time between epochal events. And as Jim Newton explains in his superb biography of Dwight Eisenhower during his eight...
Cover image of "Sweet Taste of Liberty," one of the best books of 2023 so far

The best books of 2023 so far

The mid-year point offers a convenient opportunity to take stock, with a glance back at the best books of 2023 so far. Now, when I write “best books,” keep in mind that I'm only writing about the best books I’ve read from January 1 to June 30. In short, they’re only the “best” of more than 100...
A Fine Red Rain

In Gorbachev’s Russia, corruption and a serial killer

In March 1985, a little known Communist Party apparatchik named Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the pinnacle of leadership in the Soviet Union. He was the country's fourth supreme leader in four years, and he took charge as the USSR was in steep decline following seven decades of Communist rule. As...
The Sanctuary Sparrow

A cozy mystery set in 12th-century England

In the previous entries in Ellis Peters' Cadfael Chronicles, much of the focus lies on the contest between King Stephen (1096-1154) and his cousin Empress Maud (1102-67) over the English crown. The warring cousins crowd the background. But the seventh book, The Sanctuary Sparrow, resembles a cozy...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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