Books

The Fresh Air book critic reviews three books about life in New York City: Love Monkey, by Kyle Smith, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts, by Charlie LeDuff, and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan, by Phillip Lopate.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new biography Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn. It's about the rivalry between Queen Elizabeth the First and her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Amateur Marriage, the new book by Anne Tyler.

Fresh Air's book critic gives us her list of the top books of the year.

Corrigan's choices include: The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon; Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy; and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 by David Maraniss.

Corrigan reviews several reprints of books by female detective fiction writers, including Anna Katherine Green's That Affair Next Door: And, Lost Man's Lane, Metta Fuller Victor's The Dead Letter & The Figure Eight, (both from Duke University Press) and re-issues from The Feminist Press, Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes and The Girls in 3-B by Valerie Taylor.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History by Devin McKinney.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews American Woman, the new novel by Susan Choi.