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.
Phil Klay is an American writer who was raised in New York, U.S.A and graduated from Dartmouth College. He served as a veteran of the U.S Marine Corps and a Public Affairs officer in the Iraq war (2007-2008). His service in Iraq gave him the idea...
Swamplandia! was written by Karen Russell and was published in 2011. The protagonist is Ava Bigtree, who is only thirteen, and her family owns Swamplandia!, a gator theme park in the Everglades (which is in Florida). The Bigtrees are alligator...
Hangover Square is Patrick Hamilton’s most successful and well-known novel, thought far from his most famous literary creation. Better known as a playwright, Hamilton wrote the original stage drama Rope, which Alfred Hitchcock later adapted for...
The Children of Men was written by P. D. James, an award-winning author of more than twenty books. Many of her books have been adapted into films and have been internationally broadcasted on television. This book was first published during 1992...
Jonah’s Gourd Vine is a testament to the commitment of needing to write and a slap in the face to every author who still can’t finish a novel despite writing on a computer while seated at a large desk. This narrative was Zora Neale Hurston’s first...
The Short Fiction of Chinua Achebe is a collection of short stories by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe published between 1953 and 1972. It is an essential read for anyone looking to receive great insight on the African people who to this day remain...
Spring Moon is the title of one of Bette Bao Lord’s works, which was published in 1981. The protagonist of this novel is Spring Moon, a spoiled and wealthy girl who lives in the House of Chang in ancient China. However, Spring Moon’s life of...
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a novel written by Anne Bronte. Bronte used her pseudonym Acton Bell when she first published the book in 1848. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was Anne’s second (and last) novel, and even though it was extremely popular...
The Popol Vuh means "Book of the Community" or "Council Book" in the classical language of Quiche. It details the mythological histories and also a history of the rulers of the Mayan Kingdom, the ancient civilization of highland Guatemala and...
Charles Simic, born during 1938, is a well-respected American poet with an intuitive approach to creating remarkable poetry. He was born in Yugoslavia and emigrated to the United States as a teenager, according to the Poetry Foundation. He was an...
The Conjure Woman and Other Tales is really less a simple anthology of short stories than it is a novel in the form of a collection of loosely connected short stories. Charles Waddell Chesnutt is considered to be the singular greatest writer of...
A path breaking American psychological drama film, Girl, Interrupted (1999) is a movie that is loosely based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir with the same name. This film is about Susanna’s journey of self-discovery, after she is committed to the state...
Jonathan Swift, born in Ireland in 1667, was a writer, involved in politics and poet. He wrote for the Whigs and the Tories, along with other works such as A Tale of a Tub, Gulliver's Travels, and A Modest Proposal; many of his works were done...
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, written by David Foster Wallace, is a short story collection consisting of more than twenty different stories. It was first published during 1999 and was later published during 2000 by Abacus. Some short stories...
Marianne Moore’s poetry is obsessed with mathematical perfection and formal precision. The precision of syllabic complexity results in internal rhymes and rhythms that drive the stanza formation rather than the typical reliance upon the rhymes...
Tokyo Story is a Japanese movie that was directed by Yasujiro Ozu. It was released in 1953 and eventually gained fame. Many critics said that this movie was Ozu’s masterpiece and is one of the greatest films of all time. In 2012, it was still...
The Gangster We Are All Looking For is the first novel by American-Vietnamese author Le Thi Diem Thuy. It was published by Knopf in 2003. Before being published as a novel of its own, it was published in The Best American Essays of 1997.
After it...
Edna St. Vincent Millay is the very definition of the poet as rebel. At least as much Shelley and maybe even more than Keats, Millay fully inhabits the role of the writer in society as the caretaker of its continued progression forward. She was a...
Jurassic Park is a science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton in 1990. Originally intended as a screenplay, Crichton began Jurassic Park in 1983 about a university student who recreates a dinosaur. Given the financial resources that would...
Colin Teevan’s How Many Miles to Basra? was originally commissioned as a radio drama by BBC3 and initially broadcast on July 11, 2004. The first stage performance of the play was produced in September 2006 by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds....
Jim Wallis is an American novelist, theologian, and political commentator born in Detroit, Michigan on June 4, 1948. As a teenager, he was heavily involved in local government, participating in Students for a Democratic Society as well as the...
Ayi Kwei Armah (born 1939) is an author from Ghana. His contributions to literature include novels, essays, poetry, short stories, and even children's books. Primarily concerned with racism and prejudice, Armah's personal life becomes intertwined...
Marley and Me is an autobiographical novel written by John Grogan and published in 2005. The novel reveals of the narrator’s life within 13 years. During these years, he and his wife have been through a lot, but what is so distinctive of the...
Brideshead Revisited (The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder) was authored by Evelyn Waugh. It was first published during 1945 and was published again during 1982 by Back Bay Books. This novel delves into the life of Charles...