Newest Study Guides

Jack Finney first published a short story titled “Sleep No More” in Colliers Magazine in 1954. A year later, that short story had been fleshed out into novel length and given the lurid, but exponentially more marketable title The Body Snatchers. A...

Gita Mehta is the author of two previous books, Karma Cola and Raj. Karma Cola is a documentary satire while Raj is a work of historical fiction.

A River Sutra is a lyrical series of interlocking stories that transport the reader to a contemporary...

My Sainted Aunts was written and published (1992) by Bulbul Sharma, an Indian painter and writer born in 1952. Sharma spent majority of her life in Bhilia, and went to Moscow for her studies. Upon her return to India in 1973, she pursued a career...

James A. Michener is the author of The Bridge at Andau, which was originally published during 1957. It was published again during 1985 by Fawcett. Michener details a true account of the Hungarian Revolution. He talks about the city of Budapest...

Published in 2010, Vida is a collection of short stories that were written by Patricia Engel. The stories are narrated in first person, and the danger of anecdotal fiction is the lack of interesting descriptions and emotional involvement for the...

Woodcuts of Women: Stories is a collection of ten short stories written by the American writer Dagoberto Gilb and published in the year 2003. The short stories present ten stories and have as its main subject the interaction between men and women....

Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande was not only was instrumental in bringing the writer a Nobel Prize, but is regarded as both his own individual magnum open and the singular defining masterwork in the history of Symbolist drama. Heavily...

The Enuma Elish is the name given the collected myths passed down through the oral tradition that describe the creation myth of the ancient Babylonian civilization. The title that has been given to ancient manuscripts is a reference—what is termed...

Phil Klay is an American writer who was raised in New York, U.S.A and graduated from Dartmouth College. He served as a veteran of the U.S Marine Corps and a Public Affairs officer in the Iraq war (2007-2008). His service in Iraq gave him the idea...

Swamplandia! was written by Karen Russell and was published in 2011. The protagonist is Ava Bigtree, who is only thirteen, and her family owns Swamplandia!, a gator theme park in the Everglades (which is in Florida). The Bigtrees are alligator...

Hangover Square is Patrick Hamilton’s most successful and well-known novel, thought far from his most famous literary creation. Better known as a playwright, Hamilton wrote the original stage drama Rope, which Alfred Hitchcock later adapted for...

The Children of Men was written by P. D. James, an award-winning author of more than twenty books. Many of her books have been adapted into films and have been internationally broadcasted on television. This book was first published during 1992...

Jonah’s Gourd Vine is a testament to the commitment of needing to write and a slap in the face to every author who still can’t finish a novel despite writing on a computer while seated at a large desk. This narrative was Zora Neale Hurston’s first...

The Short Fiction of Chinua Achebe is a collection of short stories by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe published between 1953 and 1972. It is an essential read for anyone looking to receive great insight on the African people who to this day remain...

Spring Moon is the title of one of Bette Bao Lord’s works, which was published in 1981. The protagonist of this novel is Spring Moon, a spoiled and wealthy girl who lives in the House of Chang in ancient China. However, Spring Moon’s life of...

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a novel written by Anne Bronte. Bronte used her pseudonym Acton Bell when she first published the book in 1848. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was Anne’s second (and last) novel, and even though it was extremely popular...

The Popol Vuh means "Book of the Community" or "Council Book" in the classical language of Quiche. It details the mythological histories and also a history of the rulers of the Mayan Kingdom, the ancient civilization of highland Guatemala and...

Charles Simic, born during 1938, is a well-respected American poet with an intuitive approach to creating remarkable poetry. He was born in Yugoslavia and emigrated to the United States as a teenager, according to the Poetry Foundation. He was an...

The Conjure Woman and Other Tales is really less a simple anthology of short stories than it is a novel in the form of a collection of loosely connected short stories. Charles Waddell Chesnutt is considered to be the singular greatest writer of...

A path breaking American psychological drama film, Girl, Interrupted (1999) is a movie that is loosely based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir with the same name. This film is about Susanna’s journey of self-discovery, after she is committed to the state...

Jonathan Swift, born in Ireland in 1667, was a writer, involved in politics and poet. He wrote for the Whigs and the Tories, along with other works such as A Tale of a Tub, Gulliver's Travels, and A Modest Proposal; many of his works were done...

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, written by David Foster Wallace, is a short story collection consisting of more than twenty different stories. It was first published during 1999 and was later published during 2000 by Abacus. Some short stories...

Marianne Moore’s poetry is obsessed with mathematical perfection and formal precision. The precision of syllabic complexity results in internal rhymes and rhythms that drive the stanza formation rather than the typical reliance upon the rhymes...

Tokyo Story is a Japanese movie that was directed by Yasujiro Ozu. It was released in 1953 and eventually gained fame. Many critics said that this movie was Ozu’s masterpiece and is one of the greatest films of all time. In 2012, it was still...