The Stacks
All book reviews
623 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.
Showing 121-144 of 623
50 in 50
by Harry Harrison
50 in 50 by Harry Harrison 2001 review. A career-spanning fifty-story Harrison collection, one story per year, that doubles as the best single overview of his short fiction.
The Chains That You Refuse
by Elizabeth Bear
The Chains That You Refuse by Elizabeth Bear 2006 review. The first collection of short fiction from a Hugo-and-Campbell-winning writer at her most generous.
Steles of the Sky
by Elizabeth Bear
Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear 2014 review. The final book of the Eternal Sky trilogy lands its Mongol-empire-inspired epic fantasy with rare grace.
Classic Rose
by Stephen Dobyns
Classic Rose by Stephen Dobyns 1986 review. A literary novel about an aging Italian opera singer giving one final tour and discovering she has been less famous than she remembered.
Stonemouth
by Iain M. Banks
Stonemouth by Iain Banks 2012 review. A Scottish prodigal son comes home five years after the wedding that ruined his future, and discovers nobody has forgotten anything.
The Church of the Dead Girls
by Stephen Dobyns
The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns 1997 review. Three teenage girls disappear from an upstate New York town and the community begins to suspect everyone, including itself.
Make Room Make Room
by Harry Harrison
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison 1966 review. The 1966 Hugo-nominated overpopulation novel that became the 1973 film Soylent Green, and is meaningfully better than the film remembers.
Flash Point
by Paul Adam
Flash Point by Paul Adam 2006 review. A Glasgow journalist investigates the death of a young African violinist competing in the Tchaikovsky Competition and stumbles into a missing-instrument scandal.
Kiss of the Blue Dragon
by Julie Beard
Kiss of the Blue Dragon by Julie Beard 2003 review. A futuristic Chicago-set romance about a half-Chinese parking-meter cop turned freelance detective and the Hong Kong syndicate she rolls.
The Rock
by Robert Doherty
The Rock by Robert Doherty 1996 review. A military-SF thriller about a Special Forces team sent into Antarctica to investigate an alien artifact buried in the ice and very much active.
When Rich Men Die
by Harold Adams
When Rich Men Die by Harold Adams 1987 review. The fifth Carl Wilcox Depression-era mystery sends the alcoholic itinerant artist back to Corden, South Dakota for a banker’s murder.
Wizards, Inc.
by Orson Scott Card
Wizards, Inc. edited by Orson Scott Card 2007 review. A 13-story anthology of urban-fantasy and corporate-wizardry stories featuring Esther Friesner, Karen Joy Fowler, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and Mark Wandrey.
Magic Mirror
by Orson Scott Card
Magic Mirror by Orson Scott Card 1999 review. An illustrated fairy-tale meditation about Hattie, a child who looks into a magic mirror and is asked who she wants to be.
Tango Midnight
by Michael Cassutt
Tango Midnight by Michael Cassutt 2003 review. A near-future ISS-set thriller in which a crew member is exposed to an airborne pathogen and the rescue mission is forty-eight hours of orbital choreography away.
Murder on a Midsummer Night
by Kerry Greenwood
Murder on a Midsummer Night by Kerry Greenwood 2008 review. The seventeenth Phryne Fisher Mystery sends the Honourable Miss Fisher chasing two cases at once in summer 1929 Melbourne.
The Wall of Night
by Grant Blackwood
The Wall of Night by Grant Blackwood 2004 review. The second Briggs Tanner thriller sends the former ISAG operator into the South China Sea to recover a Chinese intelligence trove from a sinking Inmarsat freighter.
Black Rain
by Graham Brown
Black Rain by Graham Brown 2010 review. A Tulane archaeologist, an NRI agent, and a CIA-linked search team converge on a lost Mayan site in the Amazon that hides 1944-era weapons-grade research.
The Hidden Man
by David Ellis
The Hidden Man by David Ellis 2009 review. A Chicago defense attorney walks his oldest friend through a child-murder trial. Twenty-seven years ago, the victim was the attorney’s own kidnapped sister.
Invisible
by David Ellis
Invisible by David Ellis and James Patterson 2014 review. An FBI researcher with an obsessive-detail diagnosis sees a serial-arson pattern her bureau will not. Then she has to convince them.
The Murder House
by David Ellis
The Murder House by David Ellis and James Patterson 2015 review. A Bridgehampton detective with a tarnished badge investigates a brutal mansion killing that mirrors a sixty-year-old open case.
My Life
by Bill Clinton
My Life by Bill Clinton 2004 review. The 42nd President’s 957-page memoir, exhaustive on policy, charming on biography, evasive on Lewinsky, and surprisingly self-aware on race.
The Trigger
by Arthur C. Clarke
The Trigger by Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell 1999 review. A field that detonates all chemical explosives within range arrives in a near-future America. The Second Amendment debate gets a hardware upgrade.
The Light Of Other Days
by Arthur C. Clarke
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter 2000 review. Wormhole technology lets anyone look anywhere, anytime. The end of privacy and the end of secret history arrive in the same decade.
Cradle
by Arthur C. Clarke
Cradle by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee 1988 review. A retired Navy diver in Key West stumbles onto a Trident missile recovery operation and an alien artifact older than Earth.