Maureen Corrigan

Leonard S. Bernstein — the writer, not the composer — once owned and managed a garment factory. In his first work of fiction the octogenarian crafts quaint parables about the comic futility of life.

This year, Fresh Air's book critic rejects the tyranny of the decimal system and picks 12 titles published in 2014 — all with characters, scenes and voices that linger long past the last page.

Ron Rash's best short stories from the past 20 years take you to a land apart psychologically and geographically. His writing is powerful, stripped down and very still.

A digital publisher has released a bounty of Colwin's books: four novels, three short-story collections and a collection of cooking essays. Colwin, who died in 1992 at age 48, had an "elusive magic."

In Richard Ford's brilliant collection of four short stories, protagonist Frank Bascombe returns to be "frank" about touchy topics. His awareness, particularly of mortality, is profound and hilarious.

Hector Tobar had exclusive access to the 33 miners to report his new book detailing the claustrophobic horror they faced when they were trapped for 69 days in 2010. The result is a doozy.

On a cold evening in London in 1817, painter Benjamin Haydon hosted a dinner with the likes of Keats and Wordsworth. Critic Stanley Plumly recreates the crackling conversation about art and science.

Heads tend to roll, figuratively and otherwise, in Mantel's writing. Critic Maureen Corrigan says this new short story collection — about grotesque characters in the modern world — is breathtaking.

Brian Morton's novel features a 75-year-old woman — an icon of the Second Wave Women's Movement — who's a self-described "difficult woman." It's a witty, nuanced and ultimately moving novel.

Sarah Waters' new novel The Paying Guests is a knockout, which isn't a word any of her characters would use.

Waters' novel opens in 1922: the Edwardian Age with its high collars and long skirts is dead; the Jazz Age is waiting to be born, at least, that's the case ...

Sarah Waters' new novel The Paying Guests is a knockout, which isn't a word any of her characters would use.

Waters' novel opens in 1922: the Edwardian Age with its high collars and long skirts is dead; the Jazz Age is waiting to be born, at least, that's the case ...

David Mitchell's latest fantasy is an odyssey into the dark side, spanning from 1984 to 2043. It's about a teenager who runs away from her London home and becomes prey to a ghastly gang of mystics.

The HBO show began its final season Sunday. Terence Winter says he wrote the Prohibition-era drama in part to work with Martin Scorsese. It was "something I couldn't possibly ... pass up," he says.

Ben Lerner's new novel is about a writer who gets an advance for a second work of fiction, is diagnosed with an aortic heart valve problem and agrees to be the sperm donor for a close friend.

In his first graphic novel, Jules Feiffer, 85, has returned to the seedy comic strips, hard boiled novels and B movies of his youth. Maureen Corrigan says it's "a mulligan stew of murder and desire."

Julie Schumacher's anti-hero pens recommendations for junior colleagues, lackluster students and former lovers. The novel deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage.

Chris Leslie-Hynan's debut novel follows a white grad student who's a chauffeur to a black basketball player. It references The Great Gatsby often with fresh takes on race, manhood and meritocracy.

Yelena Akhtiorskaya's debut novel is about a family that emigrates from Odessa to the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, N.Y. It's a funny tale full of insider knowledge and offbeat words.

After Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird, she became a recluse and lived with her sister, Alice, in Alabama. Reporter Marja Mills uses rich detail to provides glimpses into their twilight years.

Jacqueline Winspear's debut mystery, Maisie Dobbs, set in England around World War I, came out in paperback a decade ago. A new edition testifies to the enduring allure of the traditional mystery.