Maureen Corrigan

Book critic Maureen Corrigan remembers the veteran NYC newsman, who died Aug. 5, as "a tenement kid and high school drop out who never lost connection to where he came from."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan who was a fan of Sue Grafton, has an appreciation of the mystery writer who died at the age of 77 on December 28th. And then we hear an excerpt of Terry's 1989 interview with Grafton.

The British novelist set shocking crimes in mundane settings -- always adding a dash of social criticism. Critic Maureen Corrigan says she is forever giving Rendell's books to friends.

A digital publisher has released a bounty of Colwin's books: four novels, three short-story collections and a collection of cooking essays. Colin, who died in 1992 at age 48, had an "elusive magic."

Recently, Fresh Air contributor Maureen Corrigan found a letter from then-Secretary of War James Forrestal that had been sent to her father after he had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 1945. In that letter, she found an expression of gratitude that could serve us well today.

The National Book Critics Circle has announced that two feminist literary scholars, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, will receive a lifetime achievement award. Critic Maureen Corrigan says their groundbreaking 1979 book, The Madwoman in the Attic, changed the way we read.

Science-fiction writer Jack Finney would have turned 100 this month. Critic Maureen Corrigan says he had a knack for tapping into our shallowly buried psychological anxieties. At its core, Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about how our loved ones inevitably change — and it is as sad as it is scary.

What can old issues of Publishers Weekly tell us about reading habits in dire economic times? Maureen Corrigan cracks open some of the magazine's 1933 issues and learns that readers today aren't so different from our Depression-era brethren.

Fresh Air's book critic looks back at a busy year and selects the books that linger in memory as the calendar page turns.

Her favorite fiction:

Norman Mailer's work combined sweeping cultural criticism, erudition and obscenity.

Mailer's 60-year career was full of depth and controversy. The novelist, who died Nov. 10, was often deliberately provocative, says book critic Maureen Corrigan.

And though he made perhaps his strongest impact as an essayist and journalist, Mailer wanted to be remembered as a novelist.