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SCIENCE FICTION

MYSTERIES & THRILLERS

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Porfiry Rostnikov’s last case

Before his death in 2009, the prolific detective novelist Stuart Kaminsky wrote 16 police procedurals featuring a Moscow investigator named Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. The books span the years 1981 to 2008. They encompass the final years of Communist rule and the first two...

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NONFICTION

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

20 top nonfiction books about World War II

If you've been reading my reviews for very long, you're aware that the World War II era holds special fascination for me. This might have something to do with the fact that I was born then—in fact, about six months before the USA entered the war. Or maybe it's just because it...

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Popular Fiction

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 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...
The Calculating Stars is by one of the best new science fiction authors.

10 new science fiction authors worth reading now

Even today, anyone over the age of fifty or so is likely to think of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke when the subject of science fiction comes up. Yet all three have been dead for a long time (Heinlein in 1988, Asimov in 1992, Clarke in 2008), and the field has moved...
Cover image of "The Armour of Light,"

The Kingsbridge Saga moves to the Industrial Revolution

Many readers know Ken Follett as the author of the popular spy thrillers Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca. But in his long writing career he has sold nearly 200 million books. And the Kingsbridge Saga accounts for more than half the total. It is without question one of, if not the...
Cover image of "The Leveling,"

A compelling tale of intrigue in Central Asia

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Few Americans know anything about Central Asia. Yet a quick glance at the map shows that the region is nestled among Russia to the north, China to the east, Pakistan and India to the south, and Iran to the southwest. In short, the "Stans" of Central Asia are the...
Cover image of "Pogrom, a book about the shocking event before the Holocaust that highlighted anti-Semitism

Before the Holocaust, the Kishinev pogrom shocked the world

It was the event that introduced the word "pogrom" to the world outside Russia. Its name is little known elsewhere today, but among generations of Israelis and in the homes of many older Jews around the world, the murderous rampage that took place in the Eastern European city of Kishinev on...
Cover image of "A Rage for Order," a book about the Arab Spring

A postmortem for the Arab Spring

Historians are fond of advancing the notion that no major event in human affairs can be fully understood until many years later, when the major actors have passed from the scene and long-suppressed archival records finally come to light. Journalists sometimes dispute this contention, citing their...
Cover image of "The Comfort of Ghosts," the final novel in a bestselling historical fiction series

Farewell, Maisie Dobbs!

World War I casts a shadow over Maisie Dobbs's life throughout the three decades that elapse in Jacqueline Winspear's bestselling historical fiction series. And the ghosts of that war haunt Maisie and many of those close to her even now, after the Second World War has finally staggered to an end....
Cover image of "My Real Children," a novel about alternate universes

A novel about alternate universes?

Jo Walton's My Real Children may be a science fiction novel about alternate universes -- or simply a complicated fantasy in the addled mind of an old woman afflicted with advanced memory loss. Since Walton has written other science fiction novels, it's probably safe to say that she intended this...
The Robin Hood Thief portrays a plausible near future.

A grim look into the near future that’s all too plausible

The record of the human race in predicting the future is abysmal. Science fiction writers, futurists, and other self-appointed pundits typically manage to get more wrong than right. Still, the exercise of looking ahead can be thought-provoking. And that's the best word that comes to mind to...
A. I. Apocalypse is about the emergence of artificial general intelligence.

Artificial general intelligence—by accident

In university and corporate laboratories both in China and the US, as well as many other countries, computer scientists are struggling to advance artificial intelligence. Again and again, we learn about big improvements in the field. However, many informed observers seem to think that what is...

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Mal Warwick - Book Reviews

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