Maureen Corrigan

Writer Stewart O'Nan has nearly 20 works of fiction and nonfiction to his credit, but his name isn't too well known beyond a community of loyal readers and independent-bookstore prowlers.

But book critic Maureen Corrigan predicts that O'Nan's literary celebrity will grow in the wake of his latest book, Last Night at the Lobster. It's a little book, she says, that's making a big splash.

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.

Culture critic Susan Faludi writes about the gender wars in America; her books Backlash and Stiffed, in particular, have sparked admiration and controversy.

Faludi's latest book, The Terror Dream, is already generating much the same critical reaction. It's an investigation of America's response to Sept. 11, 2001, in terms of the myths and stories our society — in particular, the media — grasped hold of for reassurance after that day's terrorist attacks.

Richard Russo's novel, Bridge of Sighs, is a story about unexceptional people in an unexceptional upstate New York town. But the novel, Maureen Corrigan says, is anything but unexceptional; it's pound-for-pound the best new fiction on shelves today. Russo won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls, a story about the relationships between people in a small town in Maine.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews “Run” (HarperCollins) the new novel by Ann Patchett.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcom's joint biography of Gertrude Stein and her longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Away, an extraordinary novel of immigration and epic adventure from Amy Bloom, the author of Come to Me and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews Circling My Mother, the new memoir by novelist Mary Gordon; the book chronicles Anne Gordon's battles with polio, alcoholism, and eventually with senile dementia, and details the author's acceptance of both "the burdens and blessings of caring for her mother in old age."

The sun set on the British Empire 60 years ago this summer, on Aug. 15, 1947, when India officially gained its independence. A new work of narrative history called Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire probes the behind-the-scenes political machinations — and the potentially scandalous secret love affair — that facilitated the handover.

Min Jin Lee's debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, tells the story of a young Korean-American woman whose Ivy League education exposes her to a glitzy, glamorous lifestyle — one she's drawn to, but can't afford to maintain.