This first-person narrative of a young woman with an existential mental problem struggling toward adulthood is often seen as Ms. Plath's autobiography. The Bell Jar is a delicate plunge into the mind of someone losing sanity.

All the Pretty Horses is the first novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. The young John Grady Cole and his two companions journey from Texas through Mexico as orphans of sorts, and through their struggles for their horses, with the la...