Maureen Corrigan

It's been eight years since Nathan Englander's award-winning short-story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was published. Since then, he's been working on a novel, and if nothing else, his knack for intriguing titles is intact: His debut novel, set in Buenos Aires during the Argentina's '70s-era "dirty war," is called The Ministry of Special Cases.

Distinguished biographer Hermione Lee is known for her writings on the lives of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, among other subjects. Now her much-anticipated biography of Edith Wharton has been published, and book critic Maureen Corrigan has just resurfaced after a long, long read.

Novelist A.M. Homes writes about her real life — including her reunion with her biological parents, 31 years after they gave her up for adoption — in a memoir called The Mistress's Daughter.

Celebrated Japanese crime writer Natsuo Kirino made her American debut in 2005, when the novel Out was translated into English, and became a finalist for an Edgar award.

Out told the weird story of an abused wife who strangles her husband and then seeks the aid of her coworkers in a boxed lunch factory in covering up the murder. The novel was a sensation not simply because it lured American readers out of the tourist precincts of Japan, but because of its distinctive worldview and tone.

Another Kirino novel, Grotesque, has just been translated into English.

Maureen Corrigan reviews "Seabiscuit: An American Legend."

The Other Side of You is a new novel by Salley Vickers.

Ben Yagoda is the author of When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It. It's a guide to writing that capitalizes on the lively advice of writers from Mark Twain (author of the title quote) to Stephen King.

The new novel by Vikram Chandra is about the mob in India.

A review of Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man, the new biography of the 19th century poet and novelist by Claire Tomalin. Tomalin has distinguished herself in the field of literary biography by her celebrated biographies of such figures as Mary Wollstonecraft and Samuel Pepys.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan's memoir about her lifelong love of reading is Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. This interview originally aired on Sep. 12, 2005.