Maureen Corrigan

Laura Shapiro's fascinating new book is called What She Ate, and it focuses on the lives of six women from different centuries and continents — all prominent to different degrees.

Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of Chester Himes, who published his first novel in the 1940s and was hailed as a worthy member of an elite company of black intellectuals and writers like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Now his literary legacy is largely forgotten. This new biography hopes to change that.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two new books to help lighten your mood: The Last Laugh and Who is Rich?

Nick Laird is an award winning Northern Irish novelist and poet whose witty and politically informed writing is better known in Europe than America. Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews his new novel "Modern Gods."

The title of Maile Meloy's new novel is misleading: Do Not Become Alarmed sounds like a suspense story. Granted, I did read it in two nights; but, while I'm a unapologetic fan of thrillers, Meloy's novel is something else, something trickier to characterize. I'd call it a very smart work of literary fiction that exposes how very thin the layer of good luck is that keeps most of us from falling into the abyss.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two new short story collections: The Winter Without Milk by Jane Avrich, and The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters.

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.

In 2010, writer Rakesh Satyal won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Debut Fiction, for his novel "Blue Boy." His new novel is called "No One Can Pronounce My Name" which book critic Maureen Corrigan says is a misleading title.

Maureen Corrigan reviews 'Anything Is Possible,' the new book by Elizabeth Strout. Strout also wrote 'Olive Kitteridge' which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new memoir by Dani Shapiro; it's her third memoir and it's about marriage. Her first two were best sellers.