By now with Stephen King, it's easy to think this is all kind of ridiculous. An invisible dome descending upon a small town in Maine? People trapped inside, trying to figure out what on Earth is going on and -- as always in a Stephen King story -- dying in droves?

: Rice's new novel follows hit man-turned-angel aide

It's a touching moment, increasingly familiar to fans watching the E Street Band make its entrance: As the audience howls in anticipation and the rest of the band stands at the ready, Bruce Springsteen gently and lovingly helps Clarence Clemons walk to his saxophone at the front of the stage.

The singular experience of becoming a father can change everything. This seems to include - for literary papas - what you want to write about.

In recent years, Robert B. Parker has done his best work writing about cowboys ("Appaloosa") and a baseball player ("Double Play"). But every year he cranks out another adventure featuring Spenser, his fearless and witty Boston private detective.

Google is best understood in terms of billions. Three billion searches are conducted daily on the site. Company revenues last year exceeded $22 billion. It spent $1.76 billion for YouTube and $3.2 billion for the digital ad company DoubleClick.

If Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife," was based on love, her follow-up calls on much darker fare: jealousy, possessiveness, immaturity and dishonesty.

The "Young Jesus Chronicles," a book of cartoons created by Framingham friends, will soon join the publisher of "Dilbert," "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side."

After years coping with her own personal losses, Susan A. Berger has devoted her second career as a psychologist to helping others turn their grief into growth.

Long before Edward Cullen of the "Twilight" series and Bill Compton of HBO's "True Blood," there was the original vampire, Bram Stoker's Prince Dracula, in the gothic horror novel "Dracula."