Book excerpt: Finding that romance novels are an important literary genre not only because they comprise nearly half of paperback fiction sold, but also because they employ sympathetic values and identifiable conventions, critics present 12 studies analyzing a selection of specific conventions, patterns, themes, and images and trace them back to origins in folktales or fairy tales and back again to the latest adaptations available in the supermarkets. No index. Paper edition (778-0), $21.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR