Maureen Corrigan

"Imagine what Philip Roth would've made of this."

I was initially drawn to Phuc Tran's new memoir about growing up as the son of Vietnamese refugees because of the playfulness of its title: Sigh, Gone.

Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has been thinking about the role books play in challenging times, and she has some recommendations for books that are ready to report for duty.

It's hard to focus right now. So recommending a book can seem, well, out-of-touch. Unless, that is, the recommendation is for a novel that's so absorbing, so fully realized that it draws you out of your own constricted situation and expands your sense of possibilities. For me, over the past 10 days or so, the novel that's performed that act of deliverance has been The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel.

Lily King's new novel centers on a woman who's spent six years working on her own novel. It's a story of ambition — and what happens when the markers of adult achievement are slow to materialize.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says this is the only dystopian novel she's ever read where images of doom and baseball diamonds co-exist.

Deepa Anappara's debut novel defies characterization. Set in a sprawling Indian slum, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line centers on a trio of kids who venture out to look for a missing classmate.

Maureen Corrigan reviews a debut non-fiction book about the murder of two female hitchhikers in 1980.

It was over a year ago that I began to hear off-the-charts recommendations from trusted booksellers about a novel called American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. The novel's circle of admirers has since swelled to include the likes of Stephen King, Sandra Cisneros, John Grisham and Julia Alvarez.

Bernardine Evaristo's nuanced and entertaining Booker Prize-winning novel is told from the point of view of 12 British women of color — all just a few degrees of separation apart from each other.