The Red Convertible (2009)

Whether she's writing about a former trapeze artist saving her child from a burning home in ''The Leap'' or a violin that passes through 
generations of Ojibwe Native Americans in ''Shamengwa,'' Louise Erdrich can sketch 
a novel's worth of character and incident in just a few pages. Six tales in 
The Red Convertible are previously 
 unpublished, but more than half 
the book is culled from her magnificent novels (five stories over 87 pages
 from Love Medicine, another five over 64 pages from The Beet 
Queen). The overall effect is less of a collection of ''selected and new''
 stories than of a greatest-hits retread — or a sneaky way to fill out a publishing 
contract. B