The Stacks
All book reviews
623 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 505-528 of 623
Bloody Bonsai
by Peter Abresch
The first James P. Dandy mystery. Retiree as accidental detective at a bonsai convention. Reliably likeable cozy.
Dive Deep and Deadly
by Glynn Marsh Alam
The first Luanne Fogarty mystery. Glynn Marsh Alam writing the Florida diving subculture as a regional cozy.
Sea of Green
by Thomas Adcock
The first Neil Hockaday mystery by Thomas Adcock. NYPD detective in mid-90s Hell's Kitchen, before the neighborhood got polite.
Grimspace
by Ann Aguirre
The first Sirantha Jax novel. Ann Aguirre writing tough-femme space opera with one foot in Firefly and one in romance.
River Of Darkness
by Rennie Airth
The first John Madden mystery. Post-WWI English countryside, a returning detective, and a serial killer whose methods come straight from the trenches.
The Plague Dogs
by Richard Adams
Richard Adams's third novel. Two laboratory dogs escape in the Lake District. The book that broke me as a 12-year-old.
Maia
by Richard Adams
Richard Adams's prequel to Shardik. A 1,400-page erotic-political fantasy that is one of the strangest entries in any major writer's bibliography.
Shardik
by Richard Adams
Richard Adams's 1974 follow-up to Watership Down. A religious epic about a hunter and a giant bear. Difficult, devastating, deeply serious.
The Youngest Miss Ward
by Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken writing about the third Ward sister, the one Austen never bothered with in Mansfield Park. Quietly subversive.
Baseball Cat
by Garrison Allen
The fourth Penelope Warren cat cozy. Garrison Allen putting his Marine bookstore owner at a desert spring training camp. Reliable cozy comfort.
Last of the Dixie Heroes
by Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams sending a downsized executive into the world of Civil War reenactment. The slow tilt from hobby into something darker is masterfully timed.
A Cat With the Blues
by Lydia Adamson
A late-period Alice Nestleton cat cozy. Manhattan jazz club murder. Even the most loyal series readers can feel the diminishing returns.
The Golden Age: A Novel of Queen Elizabeth
by Tasha Alexander
Tasha Alexander stepping outside Lady Emily to write Elizabeth I. Respectable Tudor fiction in a crowded subgenre.
Fear
by Jeff Abbott
A Jeff Abbott standalone thriller. An amnesia premise that should not work and a writer who knows exactly how to make it.
Promises of Home
by Jeff Abbott
The third Jordan Poteet mystery. Jeff Abbott bringing back a former friend to the small Texas town and turning the screws.
Their Wildest Dreams
by Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams sending three suburban midwives into the desert with one suitcase of money. The slow disintegration is the point.
Jane Fairfax : Jane Austen's Emma, Through Another's Eyes
by Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken telling Emma from the point of view of Jane Fairfax. The book Austen almost wrote, finally written.
Riders of the Dead
by Dan Abnett
Dan Abnett alone, doing a Warhammer Fantasy Kislev novel with cavalry, undead, and the kind of fantasy steppe writing the form rarely allows.
Straight Silver
by Dan Abnett
A mid-period Gaunt's Ghosts novel. Trench warfare on a barely-habitable Imperial world. Dan Abnett doing WWI in space and meaning it.
The Price of Murder
by Bruce Alexander
The tenth (and posthumous) Sir John Fielding. Bruce Alexander's widow finished what he had begun, and the result is more graceful than continuation novels usually are.
Smuggler's Moon
by Bruce Alexander
The eighth Sir John Fielding. Bruce Alexander takes the blind magistrate to the Kentish coast for smuggling, dragoons, and the kind of countryside violence London does not see.
Royal Cat
by Garrison Allen
The second Penelope Warren cat cozy. A Renaissance Faire, a death, and Mycroft the Abyssinian still attending royally.
Murder on the Caronia
by Conrad Allen
The fourth Dillman and Masefield. Cunard's newest liner, a music-hall act in steerage, and a body that should not have been found.
Murder on the Minnesota
by Conrad Allen
The third Dillman and Masefield mystery, this time on a Pacific crossing. Conrad Allen at his most relaxed.