For roughly a century and a half, the Brontes have been the subject of biographies that, much like poor Branwell’s painting, cover up more than they reveal. When Barker’s monumental family biography of the Brontes was published in 1994, it was as though a skilled restorer had come along to work on the group portrait, gently rubbing off the lurid colors of myth and gossip, and revealing the bones of truth underneath.

Now, Barker has updated the biography — which has become the standard Bronte biography — with new material. The footnotes alone, in this new edition of The Brontes, run to 136 pages. It’s rare that I have occasion to say this, but, taken collectively, those footnotes are thrilling. Referencing sources as diverse and dry as the daily engagement diaries of obscure Bronte neighbors, Barker attests to the fact that with steady scholarly detective work, the truth of the past can slowly be approached.

—Maureen Corrigan reviews a new edition of the landmark biography, The Brontes

The Age of Miracles is literary fiction, but it spins out the same kind of “what if?” disaster plot that distinguishes many a classic sci-fi movie. Too bad the title The Day the Earth Stood Still was already taken, because it really would have been the perfect title for Thompson’s novel.

— Maureen Corrigan reviews a melancholy page-turner that’s more than just a disaster plot.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Alice Kessler-Harris’ new biography of Lillian Hellman. An excerpt:”Born in New Orleans into a Jewish family, Lillian Hellman came of age in the Roaring ’20s, liberated by flappers and Freud. Hellman drank like a fish, swore like a sailor and slept around like, well, like most of the men in her literary circle, chief among them Dashiell Hammett, with whom she had an open relationship spanning three decades. She was, recalled one observer, a “tough broad … the kind of girl who can take the tops off bottles with her teeth.”

Now, if you’re like me, you may be skeptical of any book about a man with a pet penguin.

— The 1996 novel Death and the Penguin is a fast-paced, witty read and what critic John Powers calls “an almost perfect novel.”

Most novels these days don’t look farther than their front yards for their subject matter, or sometimes just the bottom of the protagonist’s shot glass; Nadine Gordimer, however, like her great Eastern European contemporary, Milan Kundera, sees history, power, and a gnawing desire for something secular, yet entwined in every mundane gesture.

— Maureen Corrigan reviews Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel, No Time Like The Present.

Publishers initially passed on Lionel Shriver’s satire on terrorism, The New Republic. The manuscript languished in a drawer until now, but can a work written 13 years ago remain relevant today?

Maureen Corrigan reviews Coral Glynn, the newest novel from Peter Cameron: “I was in my local independent bookstore last week, enjoying the endangered pleasure of wandering around and snuffling through interesting-looking books when I overheard two women talking in front of the new releases section. “I need a new British novelist,” one of them said. Ladies, I should have spoken up, but the moment passed and, besides, it was too awkward to explain that the one of the best British novelists writing today was born in New Jersey.”

‘Coral Glynn’: The Art Of Repression (via ‘Coral Glynn’: The Art Of Repression : NPR)

For every kid who’s ever been smothered by parental concern, there have always been plenty in America and elsewhere who’ve been left to fend for themselves. One cold consolation these kids have is that their stories usually make for better literature.

Tupelo Hassman’s debut novel stars Rory, a resilient-if-ragged life force raised in a Reno trailer park who adopts a tattered copy of The Girl Scout Handbook as her Bible. Rory endures sexual abuse, the death of loved ones, and everyday invisibility — all without playing for our sympathy.

It’s impossible to imagine a non-Jew writing this novel even as it’s tricky enough, as a non-Jewish critic, to review it. If I like the book, I’m insensitive; if I say it’s in bad taste, I’m falling into the guiltily pious attitude toward [Anne] Frank that Auslander ridicules.

— Maureen Corrigan review Shalom Auslander’s comic novel about the Holocaust.

The year is 1622, and a tormented English Puritan strikes out for the Plymouth Plantation in Hugh Nissenson’s moody, intelligent novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Pilgrim is a work of straightforward historical fiction — of the sort that you don’t see so much anymore.

Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of Pauline Kael essays: “What Kael continues to give readers through her selected essays and reviews is her gutsy and still controversial article of faith that criticism should be rooted in emotion. She told us it was not only OK but a prerequisite that a critic be a fan.”

Make sure you start Helen Schulman’s new novel, This Beautiful Life on a Friday night, so that when you find yourself compelled to stay up all hours reading it, you can take the rest of the weekend, not only to recover, but to think long and hard about the advantages for your kids of home schooling; cloistered convents, kibbutzes, monasteries and ashrams; or, perhaps, a semester abroad program in Antarctica.

— Maureen Corrigan reviews Helen Schulman’s This Beautiful Life

It’s such a minty fresh delight to open up Kevin Wilson’s debut novel, The Family Fang, and feel the revitalizing blast of original thought; robust invention; screwball giddiness.

— Maureen Corrigan reviews The Family Fang, the debut novel by Kevin Wilson.

In a poll of librarians, teachers, publishers, and authors, the trade magazine Publisher’s Weekly asked for a list of the best children’s books ever published in the United States. Hands down, the No. 1 book was E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Now, a new book called The Story of Charlotte’s Web explores how White’s masterpiece came to be.

A good novel doesn’t just transcend the boundaries of its target market — it knows nothing about target markets. … Many of these crossover “teen” novels are satisfying to adult readers because they tap into ageless themes, namely the sense that each of us longs to know who we really are in a strange, confusing and sometimes otherworldly world. As it turns out, the search for self is a lifelong one.

Here are five titles for summer reading that will appeal to readers across age groups.