The Stacks
All book reviews
115 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 97-115 of 115
Cold Steel Rain
by Kenneth Abel
The first Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing New Orleans politics and corruption with a New Orleans-specific moral exhaustion you cannot fake.
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.
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 Purity of Vengeance
by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The fourth Department Q novel. The Danish eugenics program at Sprogo, four decades on. Adler-Olsen at his most morally serious.
The Keeper of Lost Causes
by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The first Department Q novel. Detective Carl Morck goes down to the basement and finds a five-year-old missing-politician case. The series begins here.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
The Alexie short story collection that made his career. Some of these became Smoke Signals. All of them earn their place.
The End of Everything
by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott writing a thirteen-year-old's point of view as her best friend disappears. Quiet, devastating, almost too uncomfortable to recommend.
Last Argument Of Kings
by Joe Abercrombie
The final First Law book. Abercrombie sticks every landing he had been setting up for two books, and the result is bleak in the best way.
The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin
The first Erast Fandorin novel. A young clerk in 1876 Moscow investigates an apparent suicide and falls down a labyrinth.
Before They Are Hanged
by Joe Abercrombie
The second First Law novel. Three plot threads in three different countries, all going progressively worse. Abercrombie at his peak.
A Conspiracy of Faith
by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The third Department Q novel. Carl Morck investigates a message in a bottle written in blood. The best book in a great series.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
YA semi-memoir about a kid who transfers off the rez to a white school. Funny, brutal, repeatedly banned, deserves to be read.
Reservation Blues
by Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie's first novel. Robert Johnson hands his guitar to a kid on the Spokane Reservation. Magic realism with grief in the bones.
Bury Me Deep
by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott rewriting a real 1930s Phoenix murder case as a fever dream. Period noir with a feminist undertow.
The Blade Itself
by Joe Abercrombie
Grimdark fantasy with a beating heart underneath the cynicism. Abercrombie writes the kind of characters you would cross a kingdom for.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide
by Douglas Adams
The collected Hitchhiker's books in one volume. If you have not read these, you have a treat ahead. If you have, you already know.
Deep Work
by Cal Newport
A wake-up call for knowledge workers everywhere. Newport makes a compelling case that the ability to focus deeply is the superpower of the 21st century.
Atomic Habits
by James Clear
The single best book on building good habits. Clear breaks down the science into a practical system anyone can follow - and actually stick with.