Newest Study Guides
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (2019) is Holly Jackson's debut novel. Jackson, 30, had long wanted to write a novel. She started to write A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, a "true crime obsession." Prior to writing the novel, Jackson devoured...
Horse: A Novel is a historical fiction novel written by Australian-American author Geraldine Brooks. It was published by Viking on 14th June 2022. Brooks based the story on the renowned Thoroughbred horse Lexington.
In 2019, Theo—a Nigerian...
Chain of Iron was published in 2021. It follows the so-called Shadowhunters, a group led by Cordelia Carstairs (who is set to be married to a man she had courted for some time), which investigates killers in early 1990s England. At first, they...
Doctor Thorne is the third entry in the series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire by Anthony Trollope. The novel was originally published in 1858. In addition to being the third in the series, Doctor Thorne is also the...
The Warden is the first entry in Anthony Trollope's The Barsetshire Chronicles trilogy. First published in 1855, The Warden tells the story of Mr. Septimus Harding, the aging warden of Hiram's Hospital, which provides homes to the poor.
Although...
Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks was originally published in serial form in 1865 and as a novel in 1866. Oliphant's novel follows the eponymous Lucilla Marjoribanks, an aristocratic woman forced to live in the backward English town of...
Alice Munro was born in 1931 in Laidlaw, Canada. Monroe specialized in writing English short stories. In 2013, Munro won the prestigious Nobel Prize in literature. Other notable awards won by Munro include the Governor's General Award (1968, 1978,...
Author Sharon Creech's Love That Dog was first published in 2001 by HarperCollins. Written in free verse in the form of daily diary entries, Creech's novel tells the story of a young boy named Jack. At the start of Love That Dog, Jack is portrayed...
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover is a romance novel published in 2016 by Atria Publishers Limited. The central character is Lily Bloom, and the novel is about the doomed relationship between her parents and her failed marriage with Ryle Kincaid....
Frank Herbert is among the most widely read and celebrated science fiction authors ever. In 1965's Dune, Herbert wrote one of the most enduring science fiction novels ever. The follow-up to that novel is entitled Dune Messiah and was published in...
James McBride's Deacon King Kong was first published in March 2020 by Riverhead Books. The novel, which is set in Brooklyn, New York in 1969, tells the story of an old church deacon who is known as Sportcoat. One day, Sportcoat takes a gun out of...
Neuromancer, written by William Gibson and published in 1984, is a science fiction novel best known for being one of the first examples of the "cyberpunk" genre. Upon publication, Neuromancer received critical acclaim, winning the Nebula Award,...
Though Irish poet Dylan Thomas didn't survive to see his 40th birthday, he is responsible for some of the world's most famous poems. "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" is one such poem. First published in 1945 in Horizon...
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Recuerdo" is a poem initially published in Poetry magazine in May 1919. It was subsequently republished as part of her 1922 collection A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Sonnets. Millay was inspired to write the poem...
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" is a poem by Edward Lear. It was originally published 1870 in Our Young Folks: an Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls. One year later Lear would republish the verse in his collection titled Nonsense Songs, Stories,...
John Keats was one of the most recognized poets of the early 18th century. Keats rose to the helm of English Romantic Poetry at an early age. Despite Keats’ premature death at the age of 25, he left a rich legacy in poetry as a “romantic poet.”...
At its core, Vernon Scannell's "Nettles" is a poem about the trials and tribulations of being a parent. Primarily, it is a poem about the way that parents protect their children throughout their lives in different ways. The poem is told from the...
Alfred E. Housman was born in 1859 in England. Housman grew up under his mother's tender care at the Perry Garden until age 12, when she died. While growing up, Housman developed a good relationship with the cherry tree outside their garden....
W.H. Auden was a British-American well-known for his poems on topics like morality, love, and, in the case of "Epitaph on a Tyrant," which was published in 1940, politics. "Epitaph on a Tyrant" is a poem creating the epitaph after the death of an...
"The Dong with a Luminous Nose" is a poem, which was first published in 1877 as a part of Victorian poet Edward Lear's collection titled Laughable Lyrics. Lear is best known for his nonsensical works of literature, but particularly his poems. "The...
"Absence" is a poem written by British writer Elizabeth Jennings. It was originally published in 1957 in A Sense of the World, the third collection of verses by the author. This collection is characterized by poems that pursue the same themes of...
Australian author Tim Winton has had a life that few ever dream of. He details those experiences in The Boy Behind the Curtain, which was published in 2016 and chronicles his life from birth to the present day—and everything in between....
Arc of Justice is a non-fiction work published to great acclaim by Kevin Boyle in 2004. In telling the specific story of Ossian Sweet, the book shines a spotlight on the history of systemic racism in America's real estate superstructure. Boyle...