The Stacks

All book reviews

239 honest reviews across fiction, non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, romance, and more.

Showing 193-216 of 239

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

by John Clute

John Clute and John Grant's 1997 reference work. The canonical fantasy encyclopedia. Still the right starting point for serious genre study.

Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth

by Camille Bacon-Smith

Camille Bacon-Smith's 1992 ethnographic study of media fandom. Foundational academic work on fan communities and serious nonfiction worth reading on its own terms.

Human Remains

by Elizabeth Haynes

Elizabeth Haynes's 2013 psychological thriller about an epidemic of solitary deaths. Genuinely terrifying, beautifully written, severely underread.

Little Elvises

by Timothy Hallinan

The second Junior Bender novel. A 70s music-industry investigation, a senior-citizen Mafia kingpin, and Hallinan tightening every dial.

Crashed

by Timothy Hallinan

The first Junior Bender novel. Timothy Hallinan writing an LA burglar-turned-investigator with a stolen-art crisis and a teenage daughter. One of the most underread comic-crime debuts of the 2010s.

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.

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.

Five Great Novels

by Lawrence Block

A Lawrence Block omnibus collecting Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Keller. The form on multiple registers in one volume.

Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century

by Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card editing an SF retrospective anthology. His introductions are worth the book on their own.

The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel

by Robert Crais

Robert Crais bringing Maggie the K-9 dog back into the Cole and Pike series. The crossover I did not know I needed.

U is for Undertow

by Sue Grafton

The 21st Kinsey Millhone. A 1967 child-kidnapping case reopened by an adult recovered memory. Grafton at her structural best.

W is for Wasted

by Sue Grafton

The 23rd Kinsey Millhone. Sue Grafton near the end of the alphabet, writing two parallel cold cases and one of the most emotionally resonant entries in the series.

The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold's 2001 fantasy debut outside the Vorkosigan universe. A broken courtier in a Iberian-flavored fantasy kingdom, and a theology that actually works.

A Century of Noir : Thirty-Two Classic Crime Stories

by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane co-edit a century of noir. Curated with care and historical seriousness. A reference shelf in one volume.

T is for Trespass

by Sue Grafton

The 20th Kinsey Millhone. Sue Grafton writing the late-series novel that almost no one writes well. A neighbor's elderly father, a new nurse, and one of the best villains of the form.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow's 2003 debut. Reputation economies, post-scarcity Disneyland, and one of the cleanest near-future SF visions of its decade.

Paladin of Souls

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bujold's 2003 Hugo and Nebula double. The middle Chalion book. A middle-aged widow becomes the unexpected vessel of a god. One of the great fantasy novels of its decade.

Falling Free

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold's 1988 Nebula winner. The Quaddies and Leo Graf. The first book of what became one of the great SF series.

Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais

Robert Crais's 2000 standalone. A LAPD bomb squad detective with a damaged past and a serial bomber. One of the best police procedurals of its decade.

Suspect

by Robert Crais

Robert Crais's standalone with K-9 dog Maggie and ex-Marine handler Scott James. The book that broke me and most other Crais readers I know.

Endless Night

by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's 1967 standalone. Her most modern and most genuinely unsettling novel. The book she said she wrote in six weeks.

Enough Rope

by Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block's collected short fiction. Eighty-plus stories. The case for Block as one of the most versatile American crime writers of his generation.

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales

by Ray Bradbury

The career-spanning Ray Bradbury short fiction selection. As close to a complete introduction as a single volume gets.

The Algebraist

by Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks's standalone space opera. A galaxy without faster-than-light travel, a millennia-old gas-giant civilization, and one of his best villains.