Maureen Corrigan

For our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, summer reading sometimes means catching up on the books she missed earlier in the year. Here's her short roundup of some spring books.

Mary Beard taught classics for most of her life at Cambridge, but her career has also included popular TV shows and books that reach a wide audience. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says Beard's latest book, "Talking Classics," illuminates a lot about the ancient world and our own.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed two novels by 'Pemi Aguda and Elizabeth Strout.

Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN recommends three new novels: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, American Fantasy by Emma Straub, and Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Nancy Foley’s debut novel I am Agatha.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed The Keeper

Before the captivity narrative about a Mexican woman abducted by the Apache in the mid-1800s; before the storyline about Geronimo's surrender; before the torrent of details about the life and peoples on the borderlands between present-day Mexico and the U.S.; there's this first sentence:

In the beginning, things appear. Writing is a defiant gesture we’ve long since gotten used to: where there was nothing, somebody put something, and now everybody sees it. For example, the prairie.

Allegra Goodman's latest novel is called "This Is Not About Us." But our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, says that title is coy. Goodman's readers are bound to see aspects of themselves and their families in these pages. Here's her review.

Rachel Weaver worked for the Forest Service in Alaska, where she scaled towering trees to study birds of prey and dealt with brown bears in the wild. But one morning in 2006, Weaver woke up and felt like she was being spun in a hurricane. She'd encountered a medical situation she would battle for years. Weaver's memoir is called "Dizzy," and our book critic Maureen Corrigan has this review.

Writer George Saunders is a Buddhist whose practice informs his work, most notably his 2017 novel, "Lincoln In The Bardo," which won the Booker Prize. Saunders' new novel, "Vigil," also explores the Buddhist concept of the Bardo. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.