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.
They Cage the Animals at Night is an autobiography, written by Jennings Michael Burch. Burch was left at an orphanage when he was eight, and his mother, who was too sick to adequately take care of him, did not come back. At his young age, Burch...
Water For Elephants is an historical novel by Sara Gruen. It was written as part of National Novel Writing Month. Gruen has said that the backbone of her story parallels the biblical story of Jacob in the Book of Genesis.
The unusual title comes...
All Souls: A Family Story From Southie is an autobiographical memoir written by Michael Patrick MacDonald and published by Beacon Press in September 1999. The writing recounts MacDonald's growing up in the Old Colony Housing Projects in South...
John Charles Chasteen, born in 1955, is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina. Rejecting much of the neocolonialist depictions of Latin America commonly found in history texts, he saw a need for a textbook that presented Latin...
The Emigrants was written by Winfried Georg Sebald, which was first published during 1992 and was later published during 2002 by Vintage. This story plainly documents the lives of four German/Jewish emigrants during the twentieth century. Sebald's...
Pragmatism and Other Writings is a collection of William James’ writings and lectures that was compiled and published in 2000. Though his philosophical writings were concentrated in the late 1800s, this collection compiles some of the most...
Specials is the last part of the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. The novel's target audience is young adults and it is filled with action and adventure of the young teenage girl called Tally. This novel represents Tally's final transformation...
Pretties is a novel written by Scott David Westerfeld and published in 2005. It is the second installment of the Uglies trilogy. Pretties is a young adult, science fiction novel that tells of a dystopian world that forces every 16 year old to have...
Bernard Malamud was an American author born on April 26, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. He came from a humble background considering his parents were both Russian immigrants and he worked everyday as a teacher’s assistant to support his family. After...
Annie John is a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985. The book revolves around Annie John, a young girl growing up in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. Annie loves her mother and follows her around everywhere, which is why she is distressed...
All but My Life is an inspirational and powerful story of Gerda Weissman Klein's life during World War II and the Holocaust. In her hometown of Bielitz, Poland, the Nazis invaded, and the situation quickly became increasingly hostile and...
Frequently considered as the first novel of the Young Adult genre, Across Five Aprils is a historical novel by written Irene Hunt and set in the civil war. It was published in 1964 by Berkley and won the 1965 Newbery Honor. Across Five Aprils...
Desperate Characters is a novel written by Paula Fox in 1970 and published by W.W. Norton & Company. The novel mainly revolves around the story of Sophie and Otto Brentwood. They are a middle-class and middle-aged couple who are wealthy and of...
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. The novel is told in as a collection of short stories revolving around a circle of friends, who some of them are heroin users. The seven sections of the...
The Famished Road is a fantasy Booker-Prize winning novel written by Ben Okri and was published in the United Kingdom on 14 March 1991 by Jonathan Cape publishers.
The novel follows the life of Azaro, a spirit child, travelling in Nigeria. Azaro...
Jeanette Winterson is an English author born on August 27, 1959 in Manchester, England. She grew up in a very religious household, but her sexual identity as a lesbian often conflicted with the values of her Church. At age 16, she decided to leave...
I, Robot is not exactly a novel in the traditional sense. And yet, it is something more than a mere collection of loosely connected short stories as well. In addition to the recurrence of certain characters, the unifying aspect that maintains the...
"The Magic Mountain" is a philosophical novel of the German writer Thomas Mann, published by Fischer in 1924.
"The Magic Mountain" for its many motifs has a lot in common with the earlier story of Mann's "Tristan" (1903), in which the protagonist...
James Agee was an American author and a very influential film critic. He is known for an autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), for which he was posthumously awarded the 1958 Pulitzer Prize. He had begun writing A Death in the...
"Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." is a powerful and poignant memoir by Luis J. Rodriguez, a Chicano writer, and activist from Los Angeles. The book chronicles Rodriguez's upbringing in the city's gang-ridden neighborhoods and his...
The Lives of Animals is a unique work in the canon of South African author J.M. Coetzee. Published in 1999, the work is an amalgamation of non-fiction and fiction that come together for the purpose of stimulating discussion about the underlying...
"Anansi Boys" is a book penned by the talented British writer Neil Gaiman. It made its debut in 2005. Stands alone as a captivating tale that unfolds within the universe as Gaimans earlier work "American Gods." This novel masterfully combines...
Dispatchesis a New Journalism book by Michael Herr published in 1977. The autobiographical work details Herr's harrowing experiences as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War.
Prior to the book's release, many Americans had a very narrow...
Captain Correlli's Mandolin was written by Louis de Bernieres, a British novelist who lets his wild imagination shine through his writing. This fiction novel was originally published during 1994 and was later published during 1995 by Vintage....