Maureen Corrigan

This year's list is a mix of literary fiction, true crime, memoirs and essays, from acclaimed authors as well as some brand new voices — and you won't be able to put any of them down.

In the '70s David Rosenhan and seven "pseudopatients" went undercover in mental health wards. Their resulting article rocked the psychiatric world. But Susannah Cahalan struggled to confirm the facts.

Daniel Mendelsohn is a living answer to the question, "What will a degree in Classics do for you?" His new essay collection, Ecstasy and Terror, "cross-pollinates" the classics with popular culture.

Jones grew up black, gay and isolated in Texas. He chronicles his wobbly path to self-affirmation in the raw and eloquent new memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives.

Critic Ian Sansom's deeply informed and unapologetically digressive new book dives into Auden's life — as well as the life of his singular poem.

Margaret Atwood's The Testaments opens about 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the follow-up gives her what she wants most: the promise of an end to Gilead.

Sarah M. Broom's extraordinary memoir about the New Orleans home she grew up in describes decades of life lived — as well as the systemic racism that ultimately contributed to the house's destruction.

Margaret Renkl's vivid and original essays capture the cycle of life in a new book that will make you want to stay put, reread and savor everything about the moment.

Laura Lippman's Lady in the Lake recollects Raymond Chandler's fourth Philip Marlowe novel and Ruth Ware's The Turn of the Key recalls Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Happily, they both live up.

Colson Whitehead's deeply affecting new novel is based on the true story of a segregated reform school in Florida where African American boys were brutalized and possibly murdered.

Alexi Zentner's new novel follows a high school football star's efforts to separate himself from his racist family. It's an unsparing story about race, class and the limits of individual possibility.

Mary Beth Keane's novel opens in 1973 New York and follows two rookie cops and their families over four decades. Her closely-observed domestic tale transforms into something deep and universal.

From Nazis and narcos to mistresses and mysterious ship wrecks, Ellroy's This Storm and Mina's Conviction offer plot twists and zig-zags that take readers on a wild ride.

Jill Ciment's new novel follows a group of bored, drowsy, horny jurors who are sequestered together as they serve on a gruesome murder case in Central Florida.

Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong's words are mighty, teasing and overpowering in his autobiographical novel, written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother.

Horwitz, who died Monday, spoke to Fresh Air in '98 about Confederates in the Attic, his book about the legacy of the Civil War. Plus, Maureen Corrigan reviews his latest book, Spying on the South.

Penguin Classics has released paperback editions of four mid-20th century novels by Asian American authors: America Is in the Heart; The Hanging on Union Square; East Goes West and No-No Boy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz retraces the path of the famed Central Park architect — and discovers a deep cultural divide along the way.

Sarah Blake's The Guest Book is a multi-generational drama set against a backdrop of war and social upheaval. The Last, by Hanna Jameson, centers on the survivors of a nuclear holocaust.

Janny Scott, a biographer and award-winning reporter for The New York Times, has written a vivid and penetrating memoir about her own illustrious family.