Maureen Corrigan

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan presents her nonfiction summer reading list — three true tales, plus one book of fiction she just couldn't resist.

There are beach books full of sun and cotton candy and beach books dappled with shadow and sardonic humor. The very different beach books Maureen Corrigan recommends all have one thing in common: They carry a reader far beyond the familiar.

In her new book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of A Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale revisits the gruesome 150-year-old murder that helped catapult British mystery fiction into being. Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan offers a review.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches With Teach for America, by Donna Foote.

Two new novels feature highly educated main characters who discover that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. Maureen Corrigan reviews The Philosopher's Apprentice, by James Morrow, and The Soul Thief, by Charles Baxter.

Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, a new collection of short stories that chronicles the cultural alienation that exists between Indian-born parents and their American-born children.

The Library of America has published World War II Writings, a new collection of stories by A.J. Liebling. The volume, edited by Pete Hamill, includes three books, two dozen New Yorker pieces, maps and a chronology.

A bomb explodes in the campus office next door, and Lee, a math professor, becomes the primary suspect. Is he being targeted for revenge by someone in his past? Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews A Person of Interest, a new novel by Susan Choi.

It's January, the stock market is shaky, and the Hollywood writer's strike is still dragging on, but Fresh Air's book critic says there's at least one piece of good news this month: Sue Miller has a new novel out.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews the latest novel from the author of Nine Parts of Desire.