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.
His Last Bow is a Sherlock Holmes adventure published by Arthur Conan Doyle in England inside the September 1917 edition of the Strand Magazine by Colliers Magazine in the United States. Although considered part of the official canon, the story...
The Return of Sherlock Holmes almost quite literally begins with Dr. John Watson practically being assaulted by an “elderly, deformed man…with sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame of white hair.” In any other story, his constant companion,...
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes was initially published in 1894 after each of the individual stories contained within had appeared separately in The Strand magazine. This collection was the follow-up to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which...
The Hound of the Baskervilles was written in 1901, eight years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had already 'killed off' Sherlock Holmes in his story, "The Final Problem." However, the novel was not a sequel - the events of The Hound of the...
The Pathfinder is the next to last entry written by James Fenimore Cooper in his celebrated series of novels about Natty “Hawkeye” Bumppo. Written out of chronological order, The Pathfinder finds the dashing young hero of The Last of Mohicans...
The infant born Edward Estlin Cummings on October 14, 1894 would grow up to become the Harvard graduate who seized the occasion of his commencement speech to introduce his plans to make a name for himself as a poet in the then-scandalous Modernist...
Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence is a novel written by Doris Pilkington and was published by University of Queensland Press in 1996.
The book is based around three Aboriginal girls, Molly, Daisy, and Gracie, who are outcasts due to their mixed-race...
"Conference of the Birds" is an epic philosophical poem written by Persian and Sufi thinker Attar. The poem consists of more than 4500 lines.
In the poem birds arrange a meeting during which they have to decide who will be their king. After all...
The Time Keeper is a fictional book by Mitch Albom and was released on September 4th 2012 by Hyperion publishing company.
Dor is the main protagonist who lived in ancient biblical times during the construction of the Tower of Babel. He is the...
Published in 1993, The Shipping News is a novel written by Annie Proulx. The protagonist, Quoyle, works in New York as a newspaper pressroom staffer, but soon after both his parents committed suicide together, Quoyle’s life quickly falls apart....
Sometimes a book has such an interesting and intriguing title that one cannot help but want to read it. Such is the case with The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a novel by French author and philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery. The novel centers around...
Blankets, published in 2003 by Top Shelf Productions is an autobiographical novel by Craig Thompson. Thompson documents events in his childhood and early adulthood, his first love, bullying and struggles with Christianity. The book was a means for...
Robert W. Chambers published The King in Yellow in 1895 as a collection of supernatural tales that interrelated and connected to each other through an interesting conceit that prefigured the rise of postmodernism by a good half century or more....
Black No More, written by George Schuyler, is the story of Max Disher. Max is a clever black man who endures an extraordinary, scientific transformation, which leads him to turn into a white man. He changes his name to Matthew Fisher and builds a...
Most of Andrew Marvell’s poetry was not published during his lifetime, due to political controversy and the popular tradition of manuscript circulation. Poets in 17th century England often refused to print and publish their work as sign of social...
Three Men in a Boat is an immensely popular Victorian novel, published in 1889. It remains popular in some circles to this day.
Jerome K. Jerome’s early career as a writer was less than promising. He often had to resort to hack journalism to make...
Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 tour de force epic about the Vietnam War, is a rare film where the infamously perilous shoot rivaled the onscreen drama. At his Cannes press conference, after unveiling the (yet unfinished) cut, Coppola...
Daughter of Venice is a novel written by Donna Jo Napoli in 2002 and is a story set in the 1500s. The story main revolves around Donata, who is the wealthy daughter of a Venetian noble but greatly resents her lack of freedom. Her sister help her...
Edgar Huntly: or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, published in 1799 by Charles Brockden Brown, is one of the earliest work of American fiction, and the first to depict the tense relationship between Americans and Indians on the frontier. Adopting but...
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil is a critique of sciences, politics, and art of the modern world through a collection of aphorisms and commentary. The author uses epigrams to shine a unique light on truth and nature. His exclusive perspective...
The deeply influential poet who stood at the forefront of examining the constrictions upon gender during the era in which she lived as a vital element of her poetry is perhaps paradoxically known to the world as Anne Sexton. Sexton was the name...
TheSumma Theologica(orig.Summa Theologiae) was written by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. It is the magnum opus of St. Thomas' body of work and is still regarded as one of the most precise, detailed collections of Christian theology. It's...
Published in 1980, One Child was the first novel by American psychologist and educator Torey Hayden. It is largely an autobiographical work, based on the experiences of the author working with a class of special-needs children and containing...
Hope Leslie, or, Early Times in the Massachusetts is the third novel by Massachusetts author Catharine Maria Sedgwick. The novel was first published in two volumes in 1827 and has been considered a foundational text in the creation of an American...