Maureen Corrigan

If a comic book about surviving middle school doesn't sound like a must read to you, think again. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that Jeff Kinney's Dog Days — the latest in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — hits home with any crowd.

Set in various fantastic and creepy landscapes, Dan Chaon's latest book, Await Your Reply, weaves together three separate narratives in what reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls a "spinning nebula of a novel."

Morris Dickstein's dazzling new cultural history of the Great Depression, called Dancing in the Dark, is one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of books — that really works.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Lorrie Moore's most recent novel.

Richard Russo turns a satiric eye toward matrimony and middle age in his new novel, That Old Cape Magic. Book critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "glistening ... chambered nautilus of a novel."

Jennifer Weiner's latest novel, Best Friends Forever, is much sharper than its dopey title would suggest. With a nod to Thelma and Louise, Weiner's Addie and Valerie rekindle a friendship that fizzled decades ago.

Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel, finishing faster than any of the five men who had done it before. Young Woman and the Sea shows how Ederle's fame grew, then evaporated.

In time for the 110th anniversary of the author's birth, Ernest Hemingway's posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, has been restored — or rather, as Maureen Corrigan would have it, "remixed."

Short but not so sweet, Kate Walbert's melancholy new novel, A Short History of Women, follows five generations of women. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

In Chandler Burr's You or Someone Like You, the wife of a powerful Hollywood executive unexpectedly finds herself at the helm of a popular book group. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a "smart novel" that offers "a very tough reflection on the idea of 'group-ness' itself"