Maureen Corrigan

Depending on whom you ask, Go Set a Watchman is either a recently discovered first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird — or a failed sequel. Either way, critic Maureen Corrigan calls it "kind of a mess."

Summer and suspense fiction go together like the Fourth of July and firecrackers. Book critic Maureen Corrigan recommends four books that are deadly accurate in their aim to entertain.

In his new book, Scott Sherman describes how bottom-line business logic nearly gutted New York's preeminent public library. Maureen Corrigan calls it a "slim, smart book" full of colorful characters.

The author was born in Manila and grew up in Bahrain and New York City. Her back story is shared by many of her Filipino characters in her debut short story collection.

Kate Atkinson's novel both mourns the passing of the World War II generation and allows readers to vicariously enter into the experience of the war. It's a companion to her 2013 book, Life After Life.

Travel (near and far), literary souvenirs and the crucial companionship of humankind's best friend are the subjects of the books on Maureen Corrigan's early summer reading list.

In Andrew Ervin's comic novel, a disillusioned advertising executive rents the cottage once inhabited by dystopian author George Orwell. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the funny book has a serious core.

The British novelist set shocking crimes in mundane settings — always adding a dash of social criticism. Critic Maureen Corrigan says she is forever giving Rendell's books to friends.

Journalist Asne Seierstad chronicles the 2011 shooting massacre in her country in her latest book. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls the work "engrossing, important and undeniably difficult to read."

A reissue of four of the detective writer's 1950s novels excavates the dark depths of California's suburban decay. Maureen Corrigan praises Macdonald's "psychological depth" and "penetrating vision."

Ann Packer's latest is about a young Navy doctor who, after the Korean War, builds a house south of San Francisco. Fifty years later, his four adult children argue over the property.

Clive James was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago. "There is a grief in all poetry," he writes in his latest book of essays. "Poetry holds itself together, and eventually we ourselves do not."

Sante Fe's most famous ghost is Hannah Nordhaus' great-great-grandmother. Her new book, American Ghost, is mix of memoir, cultural history, genealogical detective story and paranormal investigation.

In Abigail Thomas' What Comes Next and How to Like It, the aging process robs the 70-something of beauty and energy. In H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald trains a goshawk after her father dies.

Kazuo Ishiguro's latest recalls the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett. It's a masterful blend of fantasy, Arthurian romance, myth, legend and postmodern absurdity — and it's unforgettable.

T. Geronimo Johnson's latest follows four Berkeley students who take an American history class that leads to disaster. It's an ambitious book about race that wants to say something big about America.

Daisy Hay's new book is a joint biography of 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and his wife, Mary Anne, whose fortune and status as a gentile helped boost her husband's career.

Rachel Cusk's novel centers on a writer and mother recovering from divorce who teaches a summer course in Athens, Greece. The narrator has 10 conversations filled with holes, lies and self-deceptions.

Megan Mayhew Bergman's stories about historical women is littered with bad-girl paraphernalia, like smashed-up motorcycles and morphine needles. In this collection, their lives are richly imagined.

Leonard S. Bernstein — the writer, not the composer — once owned and managed a garment factory. In his first work of fiction the octogenarian crafts quaint parables about the comic futility of life.