The Stacks
All book reviews
623 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 313-336 of 623
A Stainless Steel Trio
by Harry Harrison
An omnibus of three Harry Harrison Stainless Steel Rat novels. Comic SF heist work from one of the form's most reliable comic voices.
The Mile High Club
by Kinky Friedman
A Kinky Friedman mystery. The form running on its own absurdity. For Friedman regulars.
The Leaning Land
by Rex Burns
A Rex Burns Gabe Wager novel. Colorado high country, an undermined county courthouse, and the kind of regional crime fiction the form rarely delivers.
Centaurus : The Best of Australian Science Fiction
by Damien Broderick
Damien Broderick and David Hartwell's canonical 1999 anthology of Australian SF. Greg Egan, Sean McMullen, George Turner, others. The right entry point.
Blind Date
by Frances Fyfield
Frances Fyfield's 1998 standalone. A traumatized woman ex-cop and the killer who took her sister. One of the British psychological-thriller form's genuine peaks.
Without Consent
by Frances Fyfield
Another Helen West novel. Frances Fyfield writing a serial-rapist prosecution that the Crown Prosecution Service is reluctant to pursue.
Matricide at St. Martha's
by Ruth Dudley Edwards
A Ruth Dudley Edwards Robert Amiss mystery. Cambridge college politics, a poisoned mistress, and Edwards' sharpest satirical voice.
Boy in the Water
by Stephen Dobyns
Stephen Dobyns's 1999 literary thriller. A prep-school psychologist arrives at a new posting and finds the school in slow institutional crisis. Dobyns at his most carefully observed.
Red Sky
by Carl Brookins
A Carl Brookins Sean Sean PI novel. Minneapolis, a charter-fishing operation, and a missing person who has been gone longer than the family will admit.
Bloody Halls
by Carl Brookins
A Carl Brookins academic mystery. Minnesota college, a college-board political fight, and a body in a campus office. Reliable regional cozy.
Blood on Their Hands
by Lawrence Block
A Lawrence Block-edited anthology with stories from working crime novelists. Block's curatorial instincts at full power.
Like a Charm : A Novel in Voices
by Lee Child
A Karin Slaughter-edited collaborative novel-in-stories with Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson, and a dozen other crime writers. Better than the form usually delivers.
The Godless Man
by Paul C. Doherty
A Paul Doherty Alexander the Great mystery set after Issus. Persian temple intrigue and an investigator pushed beyond his usual comforts.
Contract With an Angel
by Andrew M. Greeley
Andrew M. Greeley writing a Christmas Carol variant about a corporate raider and a Seraph who has been assigned to fix him. Late Greeley, predictable in a comforting way.
In The Company Of Liars
by David Ellis
David Ellis's 2005 reverse-chronology thriller. A widow on trial for murder, told backwards in time. Structurally daring, genuinely moving.
Eye of the Beholder
by David Ellis
David Ellis's 2007 thriller. A childhood friendship, a serial killer, and one of the cleanest psychological-thriller structures of its decade.
Irrestible Forces
by Lois McMaster Bujold
A Catherine Asaro-edited SF romance anthology with a Bujold Vorkosigan-universe novella at the center. Better than the form usually delivers.
Dreamweaver's Dilemma
by Lois McMaster Bujold
A collection of Lois McMaster Bujold's early shorter work, including the Vorkosigan-universe origin story. For completists.
The House of Death
by Paul C. Doherty
A Paul Doherty Alexander the Great mystery. Murder in a Persian palace. Reliable historical fair-play procedural.
High Country
by Nevada Barr
The 12th Anna Pigeon. Nevada Barr undercover at Yosemite. Backcountry meth, missing employees, and the most physically demanding entry in the series.
Blood Lure
by Nevada Barr
The 9th Anna Pigeon. Nevada Barr at Glacier National Park. A grizzly bear, a backcountry camp, and a murder that the bear did not commit.
Sabotage : Alfred Hitchcock Classics
by Lawrence Block
A Lawrence Block-edited Hitchcock Mystery Magazine retrospective. Years of polished short crime fiction with serious editorial selection.
S is for Silence
by Sue Grafton
The 19th Kinsey Millhone. A 1953 cold case investigated in 1987, with extensive flashbacks and a structurally bold approach.
Let's All Kill Constance
by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury's 2003 LA noir. The third novel in his unnamed-narrator LA sequence. Late Bradbury at his strangest and most affectionate.