Maureen Corrigan

An artist's photograph of a young boy's death leads to a terrible dilemma in Rachel Lyon's new novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "striking debut."

Novelists Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and George S. Schuyler forged their art in what W.E.B. Du Bois famously called the "double-consciousness" of African-Americans.

Leila Slimani's taut new novel centers on a nanny who kills her two young charges. Critic Maureen Corrigan says despite its retrograde message, The Perfect Nanny is a guilty pleasure.

A new collection features five stand-alone stories by Johnson, who died in 2017. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is "the kind of work every writer would like to go out on."

Grafton revolutionized what had become fossilized formula fiction. She tossed out the genre's sexist, racist and nativist clichés and helped make the detective novel matter again.

Fresh Air's book critic says her 2017 list is chaotic in a good way. "These books zing off in all directions: They're fresh, unruly and dismissive of the canned and contrived."

A central figure in 20th century poetry, Pound was also an outspoken fascist. In The Bughouse, Daniel Swift investigates whether or not the poet's politics and madness matter to his work.

In Erdrich's new novel, fetuses seem to be randomly devolving and a new religious government is rounding up pregnant women, forcing them to give birth in prison-like hospitals.

The actor and the Mad Men creator each recently published a book: Hanks' Uncommon Type is a short story collection and Weiner's Heather, The Totality is a novella about two upper-class New Yorkers.

Kate Winkler Dawson's new book chronicles The Great Smog of 1952, when moist air from the Gulf Stream stalled for days over London, mixing with poisonous gases and causing more than 12,000 deaths.

Fifteen writers riff on various wild conspiracy theories generated about President Obama over the years. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the sly short stories in The Obama Inheritance pack a punch.

Egan's sweeping new historical novel doesn't just draw from the classic catalog of New York stories — it also takes its place among them.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two books that use experimental forms to tackle weighty topics. "Both of these odd new books offer something special," she says.

Messud's novel centers on best friends from different class backgrounds who begin to drift apart in 7th grade. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls The Burning Girl a story of "betrayal and isolation."

Laura Shapiro has likened her method of biographical research to "standing in line at the supermarket and peering into the other carts." Critic Maureen Corrigan says her resulting book is fascinating.

Lawrence P. Jackson's biography tracks the writer's course from prison to published novelist. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Himes' life story is well worth reading.

These terrific comic novels — The Last Laugh by Lynn Freed and Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam — will have you laughing at the many ways we all try to run away from the realities of life.

Francis Spufford's historical novel is set in 1746 Lower Manhattan, a world of spies, thieves, card sharks and crooked bankers. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "gorgeously crafted" work.

Maile Meloy's novel centers on two families whose children go missing during an international vacation. Maureen Corrigan read it in two nights and says it's a "very smart work of literary fiction."

Journeys, near and far, into the past and even into near space, are the subject of the novels, memoirs and narrative histories that make up book critic Maureen Corrigan's early summer reading list.