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.
Mia Couto, born in 1955 as Antonio Emilio Leite Couto, is a Mozambican writer of Portuguese descent. He has said himself that growing up in Beira, Mozambique with immigrant parents meant he was brought up in a blend of European and African...
The Dark Forest is a near-future apocalyptic science fiction novel written by Liu Cixin. The novel is the second in a trilogy (called "Remembrance of Earth's Past") and is the sequel to the first novel. Cixin is a renowned Chinese author who...
A three-part novel, Seveneves was written by Neal Stephenson and published in 2015. Stephenson is an American author who is most well known for his science fiction novels. Though his works have been categorized in many different genres, Stephenson...
Published in 2015, The Sunken Cathedral is a novel written by Kate Walbert. The protagonist’s name is Marie. Simone has been Marie’s best for decades, ever since they survived WWII in France together and immigrated to New York City together. For...
First published in 2009, A Short History of Women was written by Kate Walbert and traces the complicated relationships and interactions between the histories and futures of mothers and daughters. The novel traces five generations of women from the...
Juan Gabrile Vasquez is an author from Colombia. After studying in Bogota, Vasquez traveled the world, living in places like Paris, Belgium, and Barcelona. Along the way he received a doctorate in Latin American Literature. Although he...
Written by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Lovers on All Saints Day (published in 2015) is a collection of very interesting stories. One story follows the story of a Columbian reporter who witnesses an exceptionally gruesome murder. Another tells the story...
The Sound of Things Falling is a novel written by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, a Colombian author, and the book was actually published in 2011 in Spanish first. In 2013, Anne McLean published the English translation, which won the 2014 International...
Saint Mazie is a novel written by Jami Attenberg and published in 2015. Set in America during the Jazz Age and the Great Depression, Saint Mazie tells the story of a woman living in New York City named Mazie Phillips. She owns The Venice, a famous...
The Middlesteins is a novel about compulsive eating: psychotic-level, obsessive-compulsive eating. It is also a comedy, though—as one must surely suspect—the humor is of a hue well beyond the blackest of patent leather. A comedy about a man who...
The Festival of Insignificance is a seven-part novel by Czech-born French author Milan Kundera. The novel was first published in French in 2013 and translated into English in 2015 by Linda Asher. The Festival of Insignificance shares its...
The Hand that Feeds You is a 2015 psychological thriller/mystery novel by A.J. Rich, a pseudonym for award-winning authors Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment. It features a graduate student studying victim psychology who comes home to find her boyfriend...
The Well is a novel by Elizabeth Jolley, an Australian-English author. It was published on September 1, 1986 by Penguin Books. The narrative presents information about two girls (Hester and Katherine) who become closer to each other more and more...
Rewolucja: Russian Poland, 1904-1907 is an account written by Robert Blobaum. It covers the revolution in Poland in 1905 which led to large and significant changes politically. Blobaum, the author of this work, is the Eberly Family Distinguished...
A Theory of Justice is a work that was published in 1971 and was written by John Rawls. Rawls is a moral and political philosopher who has won many awards, held many prestigious positions, and made democracy be seen in a much better light....
Eleanor and Park was written by Rainbow Rowell in 2013 and was published by St. Martin’s Press. It is Rainbow Rowell’s second book and her first for young adults, and received significant critical acclaim upon its publication- it received a...
Annie Dillard started to write Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the srping of 1973, a book detailing her explorations of Tinker Creek, a Virginia valley near Roanoke. The book documents her year in Tinker Creek, stalking wildlife and studying the flora...
Sandor Marai was a Hungarian novelist and journalist best known for his 1942 work Embers. He was born to a noble family in what is now Kosice, Slovakia in 1900. As a young child, Marai's family traveled extensively and he was exposed to various...
Sag Harbor is the fourth novel by highly-regarded writer Colson Whitehead and represents something of a departure from his previous works in both tone, style and subject matter. The story is a semi-autobiographical account of an African-America...
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is memoirs written by Barack Obama, published in July 1995. At that moment he was starting his political campaign for Illinois Senate.
Starting form the cover of the book attention should be...
"Eating Poetry” originally appeared in the second published collection of Mark Strand’s verse, Reasons for Moving (1968). This was Strand’s breakthrough volume which first gained him notoriety for his unique and idiosyncratic view expressed in his...
“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was originally published in the Saturday Press in 1865 before appearing two years later in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old. The story can present something of a prickly problem for old-fashioned...
Sandra Cisneros is a novelist and short story author of Mexican-American descent, who was published several acclaimed works including The House on Mango Street and Woman Holler Creek and Other Stories.. She was born into a large family in Chicago...
St. Benedict founded the Benedictine monastic order, which settled in a community on a hill about 75 miles southeast of Rome called Monte Cassino. It was there that he and his fellow monks destroyed a pagan temple honoring Apollo and built a...