The Stacks
All book reviews
402 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 265-288 of 402
The Rainaldi Quartet
by Paul Adam
Paul Adam's classical music mystery at its best. Four amateur musicians, a stolen Stradivarius, and a story that takes its setting fully seriously.
Rescue Me
by Cherry Adair
A Cherry Adair Black Rose Chronicles entry. Paranormal-talents romance with the formula in confident hand.
Out of Sight
by Cherry Adair
A T-FLAC romantic suspense. Cherry Adair in mid-period form. The formula working hard.
Kiss and Tell
by Cherry Adair
The first Cherry Adair T-FLAC novel. The book that launched a long career. Honest fun and the formula taking shape in real time.
Crying Wolf
by Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams writing campus-thriller territory. A scholarship student, a wealthy roommate pair, and a kidnapping that should have been a prank.
Behind the Curtain
by Peter Abrahams
A Peter Abrahams YA mystery. The first Echo Falls book. Teenage detective work with adult moral weight.
The Blue Wall
by Kenneth Abel
Another Kenneth Abel standalone. NYPD-adjacent crime fiction with the corruption layer treated as a moral problem rather than a thriller device.
Bait
by Kenneth Abel
A standalone from Kenneth Abel. New Orleans-adjacent crime fiction outside the Danny Chaisson series. Still that particular tired-Louisiana voice.
The Poet Game
by Salar Abdoh
Salar Abdoh's 2000 debut. Iranian-American intelligence thriller set in pre-9/11 New York. Quietly prescient, quietly elegant.
All Things, All at Once
by Lee K. Abbott
Lee K. Abbott's career-spanning story collection. One of the great American short story writers of the late 20th century, finally collected.
Final Frame
by Jane Adams
The fourth Mike Croft. A photographer's posthumous show, an image that should not exist, and Jane Adams in fully realized form.
Fade to Grey
by Jane Adams
The third Mike Croft novel. Jane Adams writing a missing-persons investigation that takes its time and earns its melancholy.
Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories
by Jack Adrian
The Jack Adrian and Bill Pronzini-edited hard-boiled crime anthology. One of the best curated anthologies of the form ever assembled.
Dashiell Hammett: A Retrospective Anthology
by Jack Adrian
A Jack Adrian-edited Hammett anthology. The Continental Op stories, the Maltese Falcon outtakes, and a useful editorial frame.
A Way With Widows
by Harold Adams
Another Carl Wilcox novel. Harold Adams at his most observational about how small communities deal with desire.
The Ditched Blonde
by Harold Adams
A mid-period Carl Wilcox novel. Harold Adams writing the Depression-era prairie with the kind of dry honesty that the form usually pretends to.
Date with the Devil
by Cherry Adair
A T-FLAC romantic suspense from Cherry Adair. Counter-terror operative meets event planner. Reliably fun.
Orphan of Creation
by Roger MacBride Allen
Roger MacBride Allen's genuinely strange standalone SF novel. An anthropologist uncovers fossil australopithecines on a Mississippi plantation. The book that made Allen's reputation.
The Burying Field
by Kenneth Abel
The second Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel deepening the Louisiana political world with a parish-corruption investigation that earns its weight.
WormWood
by Susan Wittig Albert
The 17th China Bayles. Susan Wittig Albert taking her herbalist sleuth into the Kentucky Shaker community at Pleasant Hill. Quietly fascinating.
Isaac Asimov's Utopia
by Roger MacBride Allen
The third Caliban novel. Roger MacBride Allen closing out his Asimov continuation trilogy with appropriate political weight.
Allies and Aliens
by Roger MacBride Allen
A Roger MacBride Allen solo SF novel. Two short pieces in one volume, both with the careful diplomacy-first SF sensibility his Asimov books also have.
Long Teeth
by Marvin Albert
Marvin Albert's Pete Sawyer Riviera PI in solidly mid-series form. The South of France treated as a working geography, not a postcard.
Hide and Seek
by Cherry Adair
A T-FLAC romantic suspense from Cherry Adair. Mid-period, well-paced, the formula in full bloom.