Maureen Corrigan
Stories
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Arts & Life
Maureen Corrigan picks her favorite books from an 'unprecedented' 2024
This year, our Fresh Air book critic highlights alternative history, suspense, satire — and some of the most extraordinary letters ever written. Here are Maureen Corrigan's 10 best books of 2024.
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Arts & Life
'Time of the Child' is a marvelous blend of despair and redemption
Set in a small Irish village in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962, Niall Williams' latest novel avoids cliché by investing specificity and life into characters and places.
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Arts & Life
Two books delivered beauty, inspiration and humor — just when I needed them most
Sometimes, the right book shows up just at the right time. Our book critic encountered two such books this week: Water, Water, by Billy Collins, and The Dog Who Followed the Moon, by James Norbury.
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Arts & Life
Need a break from politics? Marvel at the 'Vanishing Treasures' of the natural world
With 23 short essays on creatures ranging from the wombat to the spider, Katherine Rundell's new book is essential reading for anyone whose wonder could use a jumpstart.
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Arts & Life
What if a 'Blood Test' predicted you'd commit murder?
In Charles Baxter's new novel, a small-town insurance salesman buys a blood test that can predict romantic entanglements, promotions — and more. It's a screwball satire of all-American zaniness.
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Arts & Life
A housemaid is suspected of killing a child in 'Clean,' a novel about class and power
Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán has written an intense novel about the kind of deep down rot that lingers, despite the most vigorous scrubbing.
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Arts & Life
Modest moments become revelatory in the wry and incisive 'Shred Sisters'
Betsy Lerner's debut novel weaves together the ordinary and the erratic to tell the story of a middle-class Jewish family whose suburban life is turned upside down by mental illness.
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Arts & Life
'Entitlement' disappoints — 'Leave the World Behind' was a tough act to follow
Rumaan Alam’s previous novel was an inspired swirl of suspense, social commentary and apocalyptic disaster. His latest is about a young Black woman working for a uber-rich white socialite.
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Arts & Life
Rachel Kushner's new espionage thriller may be her coolest book yet
In Creation Lake, a hard-drinking American spy infiltrates a radical farming collective in a remote region of France. Kushner challenges readers to keep up with her and not to flinch.
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Arts & Life
Frazier's 'Paradise Bronx' makes you want to linger in NYC's 'drive-through borough'
Ian Frazier’s signature voice — droll, ruminative, generous — draws readers in. But his underlying subject here is even bigger than the Bronx: It’s the way the past “bleeds through” the present.
