Maureen Corrigan

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, writer Sarah M. Broom was living in New York City, far away from her hometown and her family. In her extraordinary debut, a memoir called The Yellow House, Broom quotes from interviews with her mother and some of her 11 siblings to piece together the story of what happened when "the Water" roared into their neighborhood of New Orleans East and rose, up, up, up until it edged the tops of the houses.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reads the first book of essays by New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan recommends two mystery novels : 'Lady in the Lake' by Laura Lippman and 'The Turn of the Key' by Ruth Ware. The titles of both books evoke classic suspense novels by two men.

It's pretty rare for a writer to produce a novel that wins the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and, then, a scant three years later, bring out another novel that's even more extraordinary. But, that's what Colson Whitehead has done in following up his 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, with The Nickel Boys. It's a masterpiece squared, rooted in history and American mythology and, yet, painfully topical in its visions of justice and mercy erratically denied.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new novel 'Copperhead' by Alexi Zentner which was informed by a violent confrontation with racial hatred -- the firebombing of his parent's office when Zentner was 18 years old.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new book by Mary Beth Keane, an under-the-radar novelist who's been awarded a Guggenheim, and a few years ago was named one of the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" novelists to look out for.

From Nazis and narcos to mistresses and mysterious ship wrecks, Ellroy's This Storm and Mina's Conviction offer plot twists and zig-zags that take readers on a wild ride.

Jill Ciment is one of those just-under-the-radar writers. Probably her biggest moment of popular recognition came a few years ago, when her novel, Heroic Measures, was made into a film called 5 Flights Up; it starred Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman as a married couple living in New York City who struggle to get their elderly dog to the vet in the midst of a terror alert. They wind up carrying the dog on a cutting board through the panicked city.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel by Vietnamese American Ocean Vuong.

Horwitz, who died Monday, spoke to Fresh Air in '98 about Confederates in the Attic, his book about the legacy of the Civil War. Plus, Maureen Corrigan reviews his latest book, Spying on the South.