Book critic Maureen Corrigan has been diving into lighter literary novels and mysteries, searching for books suited for the beginning of summer. Here are some of her picks.
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New translations of Juan Emar's Yesterday, Cristina Rivera Garza's New and Selected Stories, and Gabriela Alemán's Family Album offer a look at human nature — and adventures along the way.
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Jhumpa Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the "essential aesthetic and political mission" of translation.
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Emma Straub's new novel is a charmer that unleashes the magic of time travel to sweeten its exploration of some heavy themes like mortality, the march of time, and how small choices can alter a life.
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A new book argues that greater public support for parents is critical for the brain development of America's kids.
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In their latest works, Azar Nafisi, Elena Ferrante, and Anna Quindlen vigorously assert that reading and writing can pull us out of our mess. In their hands, reading and writing are worth celebrating.
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Author Scott Hershovitz sets out to prove that philosophy, like inquisitive, rowdy children, can offer illuminating insights — even when addressing complex subjects related to misbehavior.
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Hernan Diaz's novel is constantly pulling a fast one on the reader. It opens with the saga of a Wall Street tycoon, but soon another narrative comes to upend the truth of everything that came before.
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Novelist Ann Hood, whose Fly Girl paints a picture of her time as a flight attendant, was a beneficiary of the fight by the women profiled in Nell McShane Wulfhart's book to be treated professionally.
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The award-winning poet's new collection, The Hurting Kind, is a testament to the power of sensitivity and to the reality that the world is here to both guide us and lead us astray.
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The playful and clever story pokes holes in pop culture assumptions about small towns from Hallmark movies to romance novels as two rivals in the publishing world find love far from the city lights.
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Eric Orner's book isn't just a great story, it's an enveloping visual experience crafted by a terrific artist; even if one paged through it without looking at the words, it would be a good read.
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Though winding at times, Sam Knight's book is thought-provoking and deeply researched, presenting the oddity of realized premonitions while allowing readers to come to their own conclusions.
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E. Lockhart's prequel to We Were Liars works perfectly well, too, as a standalone coming-of-age novel about grief, addiction, young love, and learning to navigate the world.
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By exploring binaries such as imagination versus reality and surface versus depth — with their often blurred boundaries — Ali Smith's latest challenges readers to embrace the indeterminate.
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At its best, Beth O'Leary's tender and fragmented narrative feels like a metaphor for experience — how we only ever know part of the story of our lives and control even less.
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T. Kingfisher treats source material like a buffet; the result feels like a cozy but still perilous D&D adventure, full of found-family, second chances, and winks to the folklore that inspired it.
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In this droll, emotionally wrenching and profound memoir, novelist Brian Morton attempt to see his mother as a whole person — not just in relation to him, or, God forbid, as an eccentric "character."
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Jori Lewis tells eye-opening stories of individuals despite scant historical record. At the outset she asks: "How do we tell the stories of people that history forgets and the present avoids?"
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It's still an open question to what degree our planet will remain habitable in the coming years. Elizabeth Cripps offers an urgent message in What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care.
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