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.
Flowering Judas, and Other Stories is Katherine Anne Porter’s first collection of published short stories, originally released in 1930 and then revised with the addition of a few new stories five years later. Since that initial publication, one of...
The Difference Engine is a 1990 novel by both William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is an "alternative history" book, and is notable for how it pioneered and helped establish the steampunk genre. The novel was nominated for a number of awards,...
Tom Rob Smith is an English novelist born in South London, England in 1979. He graduated from St John’s College in 2001 and subsequently studied creative writing at Parvin University in Italy. Before publishing his debut novel, Child 44, Smith...
One of the most respected American writers of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979) is predominantly known as a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for her poetry collection Cold Springs, and the National Book Award in 1970...
Born in 1952 in Puerto Rico, Judith Ortiz Cofer would go on to become a renowned writer, whose work spanned numerous genres. After her family immigrated to New Jersey when Cofer was 4, they again relocated to Augusta, Georgia in 1967. Cofer would...
Mary Hood was born in Brunswick, Georgia on September 16, 1946. Though a versatile writer of excelling in many forms—including novels, essays and reviews—she is predominantly a master of short fiction. Her preferred literary expression is the...
Ancillary Justice is a science fiction novel by American author Ann Leckie. It is her debut novel, and the first section of her trilogy "Imperial Radch". Ancillary Justice was highly praised, winning the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, BSFA Award,...
Written by Natalie Diaz, a former women's international professional basketball player who returned to Old Dominion University to pursue a writing degree, When My Brother Was An Aztec is a collection of prose and poetry. The book is Diaz's...
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion is romance poem written by the French writer Chretien de Troyes. Though the exact dates of when it was written are unknown, it is written presumably written in the 1170s along with Lancelot because there are a lot of...
Alejandro Morales's 'The Rag Doll Plagues' is an ambitious dystopic novel, set in three different locations across the globe at three different points in time. In each of the three sections of the novel, we encounter three different doctors of...
Written in 1993 by David Malouf, an Australian writer, Remembering Babylon is a novel that centers around an English boy, Gemmy Fairley, who is stranded on an island and raised by the island's natives. It was critically acclaimed, winning the...
Published in 2000, Pastoralia is George Saunders's second short story collection. Like its predecessor, it was highly celebrated, being ranked the fifth-greatest book of all time by literary magazine The Millions.
Pastoralia is comprised of (many...
Although Henry VIII is attributed to the Shakespeare canon and found in nearly every single collection of his plays, the general consensus has long been that the play which brings into the cycle of Shakespeare’s histories the most drama-worthy of...
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, journalist and activist, considered by some to be amongst the best living writers. She was born in 1939 in Canada's capital, Ottawa, to highly educated parents. Atwood took a keen interest in reading...
Published in 2004, State of Fear is a science fiction novel that was written by Michael Crichton. Though the book incorporates many aspects of global warming and climate change on Earth, State of Fear is actually a fiction work in which terrorists...
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath remains such an iconic fictional portrait of the effects of the Dust Bowl on victims already suffering as a result of the Great Depression in middle America in the 1930s that it can be difficult to even...
A Princess of Mars was initially published under its original title Under the Moons of Mars in All-Story Magazine in 1912. That appearance in print marked the commencement of the writing career of author Edgar Rice Burroughs (best known as the...
Published in 1945, If He Hollers Let Him Go is the first novel published by Chester Himes and the launch of a career spent examining the corrosive effects of racism. The novel came about as a result heeding advice to head to Hollywood in search of...
Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 to 20 July 1982) an Ugandan poet is considered one of the greatest contemporary African poets.His prose poem Song of Lawino brought him international recognition;a poem initially written in Acholi language but translated...
Set in Northern Ireland, Reading in the Dark is a portrayal of life in Catholic, impoverished Ireland. Written by Seamus Deane in 1996, the book won several awards, including the 1996 Guardian Fiction Prize and the Irish Literature Prize in 1997.
...The Dim Sum of All Things is a fictional novel published in 2004 and written by Kim Wong Keltner. The book follows the path of Lindsey Owyang, a poorer woman of Chinese descent, living in America and working a regular job. Lindsey tries to fit in...
William Makepeace Thackeray, born in 1811, was an English writer and journalist. Thackeray’s early childhood was spent in India before the family moved back to England after his father’s death. He displayed a strong interest in painting and many...
First published in 1782, Letters from an American Farmer is a series of letters by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur centering around various topics of the time period, including the birth of American nationalism and aspects of the slave trade. It...
Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian novelist born on March 12, 1956 in New Haven, Connecticut. As a child, her father, who worked as an anthropologist, encouraged her to focus on her studies and emphasized education as a top priority in life. With...