In 'Shadow Tag,' Erdrich creates scenes from a fictional marriage, that of two American Indians, Irene and her painter husband Gil, that suggest some of the worst psychological torments and stresses of real life.

Reading is as much a part of life as any part, and it's life itself. And it allows us to live other lives that we might not have lived if we hadn't picked up those books.

When Edna O'Brien's first novel, 'The Country Girls,' was published in 1960, her family and neighbors in the small Irish village where she was born tossed copies into a bonfire expressly set for that horrifying purpose.

The premise of 'Descent' may sound pretty straightforward: One summer morning while vacationing with her family in the foothills of the Rockies, a young girl, a high-school athlete in her senior year, goes out for a run in the higher altitudes - and disappears.