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Rebecca F. Kuang's novel Yellowface (2023) follows the story of June Hayward, a young white woman who has faced years of bitter failure while trying to break into publishing as a fiction writer. June's lack of success is contrasted by the...

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet, playwright, and actress who challenged the social norms of the early twentieth century. Her poem "First Fig," published in her 1920 collection A Few Figs From Thistles, concerns the intense and...

Survival in Auschwitz is a memoir written by Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who was imprisoned in one of the Nazis' infamous death camps from 1944 through to the fall of the Third Reich in late 1945. Levi states that he did not write the book just to...

Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a magical-realist novel about a Tokyo cafe that offers customers the opportunity to travel through time.

The book is divided into four parts. The first section focuses on a woman who wants to go...

The Changeling is a Jacobean tragedy co-written by playwrights Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. It was originally performed in May of 1622 and first published in 1652 by bookseller Humphrey Moseley.

Critics have long speculated as to which...

The Painter of Signs (1976) is a novel by celebrated Indian author R. K. Narayan. It describes a tumultuous romance between a sign painter and a political activist.

The novel tells the story of a man named Raman, a perfectionist sign painter. He...

“Nikki-Rosa” is a free-verse poem first published in Nikki Giovanni's 1968 collection Black Judgement. The poem, which is autobiographical in nature, discusses Giovanni's childhood near Cincinnati, Ohio. The poem addresses the public perception of...

When Charles Dickens sat down to write what would eventually become the novel David Copperfield, he first intended to write an autobiography, a recollection of his tumultuous, eventful life. Many of his memories, however, were too painful for him...

Ian Reid's Foe was published in 2018 by Gallery/Scout Press. Foe is set in the near future and follows Junior and Henrietta, who live together on a cramped, but isolated and remote farm. One day, a strange man named Terrance comes to the couple's...

Charmaine Wilkerson's Black Cake (2022) tells the story of two young men named Byron and Benny, who are grieving the unexpected death of their mother. When the two travel to their mother to sort out her funeral and estate, they are confronted with...

Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party was published in the United Kingdom in 1969. As with many of Christie's novels, Hallowe'en Party features Hercule Poirot, who is tasked with investigating the murder of two young women at a Halloween party. At...

A Haunting in Venice (2023) was originally published as Hallowe'en Party in 1969 by acclaimed British mystery author Agatha Christie. The name change was made for marketing purposes: a film called A Haunting in Venice was released in 2023, and...

The Changeling is a contemporary dark fantasy novel written by American author Victor LaValle. It was published on 13th June 2017 by Spiegel & Grau. The story combines elements of folklore, horror, and contemporary themes to create a...

Published in June 2021, The Other Black Girl is the debut novel by American writer Zakiya Dalila Harris. The novel is a contemporary fiction that delves into themes of race, workplace dynamics, and identity.

The story follows an editorial...

Percy Bysse Shelley wrote "Ode to the West Wind" in a wooded area near Florence, Italy in one sitting on October 25, 1819. The poem was first published in 1820 in the collection Prometheus Unbound, A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, With Other Poems....

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a novel by Australian author Joan Lindsay. Set in 1900, the book tells the story of a group of young women attending Appleyard College, an Australian boarding school in Macedon, Victoria. It details their mysterious...

Published in two parts in 1901 and 1902, Jerusalem is a multigenerational saga that tells the story of families in Dalarna, Sweden, and a Swedish church group who emigrated to a utopian Christian commune in Jerusalem, Israel. Inspired by a real...

Katherine Marsh is a 48-year-old author of children's books, which include Nowhere Boy (2018), The Door by the Staircase (2016), Jeep, Who Defied the Staircase (2012), The Twilight Prisoner (2009), The Night Tourist (2007), and The Lost Year...

Ken Cadow was born in Norwich and works as a school principal in Vermont. Cadow is a first-time novelist, and his debut novel is Gather, a young adult novel. Gather is about Ian, a young adult living in his rural home in Vermont. Ian is trying to...

Hanna Pylväinen is an educator and novelist based in the United States of America. Some of Pylväinen's works include We Sinners (2012), Unbelieving: A Memoir (2007), and Easter Among Strangers (2012). Pylväinen’s latest novel is

The End of...

Paul Harding is a 56-year-old American musician and author. Harding is best known for his first appearance novel, Tinkers (2009), which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Price and Pulitzer Prize Award (2010) in literary fiction. Paul Harding’s latest...

Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Maryland. After graduating from the University of London with a degree in African studies, Bilal published several fiction and non-fiction stories. Most of Bilal's stories connect Afro-Diasporic people and...

Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is an American exploratory fiction author. Adjei-Brenyah came to the literature limelight in 2018 when he wrote a short story collection, Friday Black. Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023) is Adjei-Brenyah’s debut novel. The National...

John Lee Clark is an American 45 years of age, a crusader, deafblind bard, and writer from Minnesota, United States of America. Clark is a unique poet and writer because he was born into a deaf family that used sign language to communicate. In his...