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.
Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert (published in 2011) by Marc Aronson is a compelling real-life account of the 2010 rescue of 33 miners trapped in Chile's San José copper-gold mine. The novel unfolds...
Bystander (2011) is James Preller's novel about one of the impactful things affecting children today: bullying. The novel follows Eric, a seventh grader who recently moved schools. After he gets situated in his new school, Eric meets Griffin, a...
The Only Ones presents a dystopian narrative in a world where adults and most children have inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind deserted cities and a group of surviving children. The protagonist, Martin Maple, who has lived isolated from his...
In 2010, esteemed thriller author John Grisham decided to publish Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, the first novel in his Theodore Boone series, which was written for children—a first for Grisham. The novel is set in the small town of Strattenburg and...
Zero Days (2023) is Ruth Ware's novel about Jack and her husband Gabe, who are two of the foremost "penetration specialists" who are hired by companies across the world to test their physical and internet security. More specifically, they are...
Elin Hilderbrand was born on 17 July 1969 and is best known for writing fiction romance novels. Most of Hilderbrand's novels are set on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, where she lives. Some of the renowned fiction novels authored by Hilderbrand...
The Henna Artist (2020) by Alka Joshi revolves around Lakshmi, a gifted henna artist in 1950s Jaipur, who escapes an abusive marriage to build her own life. She services the high-class women of Jaipur, maintaining their secrets as she navigates...
Saint X (2020) is a novel by Alexis Schaitkin that centers around Claire, who was a child when her older sister Alison mysteriously died during a family vacation on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint X. In the aftermath of Alison's death,...
Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water (2023) is ambitiously set over the course of seventy-seven years, from 1900 to 1977. The novel is set in Kerala, in the south of India, and follows three generations of the same family. However, a tragedy...
Dig is a young adult novel written by an award-winning American author Amy Sarig King under the name A.S. King. Dig is the eleventh novel by A.S. King, published in 2019. She is an acclaimed author known for writing gripping young adult and short...
Out of Africa is a memoir by the Danish author Karen Blixen, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Set in colonial Kenya from 1914 to 1931, the book chronicles the seventeen years Blixen spent managing a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills...
Geek Love is the third novel published by Katherine Dunn. The book was published in 1989, eighteen years after her second novel, Truck. Although published in 1989, Dunn actually finished writing it a decade earlier. It would take her nearly as...
Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice (called The Legacy in the United States) was published in 1950. It tells the story of a young woman named Jean Paget who becomes romantically involved with a fellow prisoner of war during WWII in modern-day...
As its title suggests, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) is a short history of nearly everything in the world. In the book, Bryson attempts to provide short and simple explanations of otherwise seemingly inaccessible topics like...
Published in 1964, The Rector of Justin is a fiction novel written by American lawyer and writer Louis Auchincloss. It tells the story of Frank Prescott—the revered headmaster of the Justin Martyr School for Boys.
Set in an elite boarding school,...
The Things We Cannot Say (2019) by Kelly Rimmer is set in the backdrop of World War II. It weaves together two timelines and features two separate but nonetheless compelling protagonists. In 1942, Alina Dziak navigated a life interrupted by the...
Nick Lake's In Darkness was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury USA. It tells the story of a young boy nicknamed "Shorty," who is trapped in a hospital after the Haitian Earthquake of 2010. Initially, Shorty is hopeful that he will be rescued....
Magisterium is a sci-fi and Fantasy Fiction novel by American author Jeff Hirsch. It was published in 2012 by Scholastic Press. The novel explores a world split in half by a mysterious Rift. On one side exists a technologically advanced...
The Yearling (1938) was borne out of advice author Marjorie Rawlings received from her editor: write about her life. Rawlings did just that. Although The Yearling is a work of fiction, it was directly inspired by Rawlings' own life. It tells the...
Shadowmancer (2002) by G.P. Taylor is a fantasy novel and religious allegory in 18th-century Yorkshire, England. The plot centers on Obadiah Demurral, a vicar with malicious intentions of controlling the world by manipulating the powers of a...
The novel Wolf by Wolf, published in 2015, is a historical fiction work written by American author Ryan Graudin. She is an acclaimed author of young adult fiction who has authored eight novels, including The Walled City and the series The World...
The Serpent King (2016) by Jeff Zentner is set in a small town in rural Tennessee. The novel follows three friends: Dill, the son of a Pentecostal snake-handling minister who is grappling with his faith; Travis, a gentle giant obsessed with a...