Books

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.

Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report talks about his book I Am America (And So Can You!) and his successful television show.

The former correspondent and contributor to The Daily Show created his own Emmy-nominated late-night show to parody Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor.

In I Am America, Colbert targets race, religion, sports and the American family as well as more mundane topics like breakfast cereal.

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.

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.

Russian arms dealer Victor Bout has armed Islamic extremists and sold weapons to some of the Third World's most abusive and murderous dictators and warlords — and he's known for fueling both sides of conflicts.

His success is rooted in the legacy of the Cold War, whose messy unraveling left him with easy access to massive inventories of weapons and ammunition built up by the Soviets. We talk about Bout with journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun, who've co-written a book about him: Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.

Stephen Carter's latest novel is his second excursion into the lesser-known world of the African American upper-middle class. In New England White, he tells the story of Lemaster and Julia Carlyle, two minor characters from his best-selling fiction debut, The Emperor of Ocean Park.

Maureen Corrigan recommends non-fiction books to read this summer.