Maureen Corrigan

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.

Our book critic continues her list of the year's best in books. This time, she tells us about her favorites in mysteries and nonfiction.

Maureen Corrigan runs down her list of the year's best fiction, including a series of books set in post-Sept. 11 New York City, Richard Ford's last installment in the Frank Bascombe trilogy and fiction by two Alices.

Short story master Alice Munro would be justified in resting on her laurels at this point in her career — she's won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award three times, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. But in her new collection of stories, called The View from Castle Rock, Munro veers off into a fresh direction — exploring family history through fact and fiction.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum.

In The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, author Daniel Mendelsohn unearths and reconstructs the lives of six people in his family who died in the Holocaust. Maureen Corrigan has a book review.

Nell Freudenberger lived every young writer's dream when her first short story was published in The New Yorker. She was 26 at the time and an editorial assistant at the magazine, writing fiction in the morning before work. Her award-winning short story collection, Lucky Girls, was published in 2003 and made our best books list that year. Freudenberger has just published her first novel, The Dissident.

Writer Alice McDermott won the National Book Award in 1998 for her novel, Charming Billy. McDermott has just brought out a new novel called After This, and our book critic says that it's a stunner.

Fiction writer Claire Messud has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award. Our book critic says Messud's just-published novel, The Emperor's Children, might just be the one to propel her out of the "finalist" category and win her the gold.

How can a nice girl fall for a trench-coated tough guy who treats women like dirt and ridicules book-reading sissies? Our book critic tries to fathom the appeal of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.