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.
The Fraud (2023) is set in 1873 and follows Mrs. Eliza Touchet, a Scottish housekeeper. Touchet has spent much of her life living and working with the famous novelist William Ainsworth. As Ainsworth declines, Touchet begins to explore her...
Published in 2018 by Nick Hern Books, Leave Taking is a play written by British playwright Winsome Pinnock. It was first performed in 1987 and has since become a significant work in contemporary British theater. The play has also been featured in...
Princess & The Hustler (2019) is author and playwright Chinonyerem Odimba's play-turned-novel, which tells the story of a young girl named Princess, who hatches a plan to win the Weston-Super-Mare Beauty Contest sometime in 1963 Bristol,...
My Name Is Leon is a fiction novel written by Kit de Waal. It was first published in 2016. As a former magistrate and social worker, De Waal drew upon her experiences from her professional background to write this story. The novel is set in 1980s...
Acclaimed African-American poet Langston Hughes wrote and published "Night Funeral in Harlem," one of his many poems about the black experience in America, in 1951. Hughes fervently believed that segregation and racism were some of the worst and...
Langston Hughes penned this poem in 1926 and it was published as part of a collection later that year. It is written from the perspective of a single speaker who tells of the dreams that the African American community have of freedom and equality...
Famed American poet Langston Hughes' poem "Democracy" was first published as a part of one of Hughes' poetry collections (entitled One-Way Ticket) in 1949. Broadly, the poem is told from the perspective of a young Black man dealing with the racism...
Bad Dreams (2017) by Tessa Hadley is a collection of six separate but thematically connected short stories. Broadly, they tell the stories of people who have to deal with difficult situations. One story follows two sisters who begin to fight...
Catching Teller Crow (2019) was written by the sister-brother team Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina. A thriller, Kwaymullina's novel is told from the perspective of two Aboriginal protagonists. One of those protagonists is the father of Beth Teller...
Jean Lee Latham's Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (first published in 1955) is a children's biography about Nathaniel Bowditch, an American sailor, and mathematician responsible for one of the most essential books for seamen of the 18th and 19th centuries:...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author born in 1977, whose literary works include short stories, novels, speeches, and non-fiction. According to The New Literary Supplement (NLS), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the most well-known and...
Anna Seghers' The Seventh Cross was published in 1942, during the height of World War II. The novel is set in the Westhofen camp, which is fictitious but based in part on real-life concentration camps. It follows a young man named George Heisler,...
Robert Seethaler's The Tobacconist (2017) is a novel about war and friendship. The novel is set during the Nazi occupation of Vienna, Austria, during WWII. It follows a seventeen-year-old young man named Franz Huchel, who travels to Vienna to...
The Turning is a short story collection written by Tim Winton. The book was published in 2004. It has received critical acclaim for its examination of various themes related to Australian life and culture.
It consists of seventeen interconnected...
Steven Amsterdam's Things We Didn't See Coming (2010) is a coming-of-age novel comprised of several different stories set over three decades. It follows the journey of a young boy into adulthood over the course of three decades. The novel begins...
Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's The Theory of Flight (2018) tells the story of Genie, a young woman who spent much of her childhood isolated from the rest of her country and the world in a field of dandelions. But The Theory of Flight doesn't tell just...
Matt de la Peña's Mexican Whiteboy (2008) is undoubtedly an innovative and unique novel. Through its use of Spanglish (a language variety mixing English and Spanish) and other themes, the novel explores the trial and tribulations often associated...
Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House (2019) is a unique and innovative memoir that chronicles Machado's abusive relationship with her abusive partner while studying for her Master of Fine Arts at a university in Iowa. In the memoir, which is...
Roller Girl (2015) was penned by Victoria Jamieson and tells the story of a young girl named Astrid, whose mother often takes her to "Evenings of Cultural Enrichment." Bored with these events, Astrid tries to find another way to occupy her time....
Alabama Moon (published in 2006) by Watt Key follows the ten-year-old Moon Blake as he navigates a unfamiliar and challenging world. Raised in the Alabama wilderness by his father, Moon must learn to adapt to society after his father's untimely...
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life is a children's novel penned by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts and published in 2011. The story is primarily set in a middle school and is the first installment in the Middle School series. The novel...