Books

Jane Gardam has spent her long career writing dry, honest books about British life. Her new novel, The Man in the Wooden Hat, showcases the regrets of a woman never quite sure that marrying her husband was the right choice. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Gardam the best British writer you've never heard of.

Before there was Superman, other comics roamed the funny pages. The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics is an anthology of these forgotten gems, lovingly selected by famed comic artist Art Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Tad Friend's new memoir Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor.

If a comic book about surviving middle school doesn't sound like a must read to you, think again. Critic Maureen Corrigan says that Jeff Kinney's Dog Days — the latest in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — hits home with any crowd.

Set in various fantastic and creepy landscapes, Dan Chaon's latest book, Await Your Reply, weaves together three separate narratives in what reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls a "spinning nebula of a novel."

Morris Dickstein's dazzling new cultural history of the Great Depression, called Dancing in the Dark, is one of those "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of books — that really works.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Lorrie Moore's most recent novel.

Richard Russo turns a satiric eye toward matrimony and middle age in his new novel, That Old Cape Magic. Book critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "glistening ... chambered nautilus of a novel."

Rafael Yglesias' novel is inspired by his wife, Margaret, who died in 2004. A Happy Marriage spans their three-decade relationship, from their courtship to her battle with cancer.

Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Inherent Vice, is a detective romp set at the end of the 1960s psychedelic era. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review.