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.
Kim Addonizio (born in 1954 in Washington, D.C., USA) is an American poet and novelist. She has published several volumes of poetry, starting in 1994 with The Philosopher’s Club and was the recipient of numerous awards, such as the Guggenheim...
Katharine Burdekin's dystopian novel was written in the early 1930s, but all but disappeared without a trace later on in the decade because its subject matter was considered detrimental to the morale of a nation under threat of German invasion....
Released in 1974, Alice in the Cities is a German movie, and it is also the first part of director Wim Wenders' road movie trilogy, followed by The Wrong Move in 1975, and another year later, trilogy-closing Kings of the Road. The film centers...
When a book is selected as a Book Club Choice by Oprah Winfrey, it is almost guaranteed to reach the top of any bestseller list that is worth being at the top of. Such is the case for Icy Sparks, a novel that tells the story of a protagonist who...
Virginia Woolf is a world-famous creative writer, critic, and theorist of modernism. The Voyage Out is Woolf's first novel, the characters of which go overseas to relax on the coast of South America. As Woolf's descriptions reveal, the characters...
The Years is a short novel penned by Virginia Woolf that actually started out life as lecture given by Woolf to the National Society for Women's Service, in January 1931. Woolf was conscious that much of her work represented women from a...
More than any other U.S. President before him, Donald Trump has inspired countless books. Among those books is A Very Stable Genius, which chronicles -- through the eyes of the authors and their sources -- the first three years of Trump's...
We have all heard the expression, "Doctor! Heal thyself!" and usually said it with a smile; but in all seriousness, what is a therapist to do when she finds herself in need of the same kind of tender ear and therapeutic advice that she usually...
Written by author Richard Wagamese, Ragged Company (published in 2008) tell a story of four people named Amelia, Timber, Double Dick, and Digger. The four are almost always homeless. One day, however, they decide to go into a warm movie theater to...
Like many of his novels, H.G. Wells' 1897 novel The Invisible Man centered around a mad scientist protagonist; the eccentric character, a man named Griffin, invents an invisibility formula that is centered around the refractive index of a body's...
A Gentleman in Moscow is a novel by Amor Towles. The novel was published by Viking Publishers on the 6th of September 2016. The audio version was read by Nicholas Guy Smith and released by Penguin Random House. His previous novel, Rules of...
Native American author James Welch published his first novel in 1974; Winter in the Blood was so well-received that Welch was immediately considered to be one of the founding authors of the Native American Renaissance. His best-known novel, Fools...
With one of the most beautiful titles in all of literature, A Horseman in the Sky is a short story by Ambrose Bierce, a Civil War veteran, journalist and author of The Devil's Dictionary, which was named one of the 100 Greatest Masterpieces of...
American playwright Paula Vogel received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her 1997 play, How I Learned to Drive. It tells the story of Li'l Bit and her Uncle Peck through early adolescence to post-college and uses learning to drive as a metaphor...
The Female Persuasion is a New York Times best-selling novel by Meg Wolitzer. The book, originally published in April 2018, follows the stories of Greer Kadetsky and Faith Frank. Frank, a woman of sixty-three years and an elegant orator, captures...
If you were to visit London's Broad Street today, you would find the home of poet William Blake, a couple of Chinese restaurants, and a slew of townhomes re-purposed and used as offices. You would also find a replica water pump, an informational...
Jacob Riis was born in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 1870. He famously became known as Jacob Riis “police reporter, reformer, useful citizen” following a biography of him by Louise Ware, published under that title. His...
Intimate Apparel is a play by Columbia University Professor of Playwrighting Lynn Nottage. The play is set in 1905 and it tells the story of Esther, a young African American woman who travels to New York City with dreams of becoming a seamstress,...
12 Years a Slave is a 2013 film directed by Steve McQueen, with a screenplay by John Ridley. It is based on the memoir of the same name, written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, and tells the story of a black man from the northern U.S. who was abducted...
In 2002, a new play by Edward Albee appeared on Broadway for the first time since 1986. The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? arrived with expectations already highly uncertain. Albee had been wise enough and crafty enough to set a foundation beforehand for...
Not only is In the Woods Tana French's first novel, but it is also the first novel in her critically-acclaimed "Dublin Murder" series. In the Woods tells the story of two Irish detectives who are investigating the murder of a 12 year-old girl. One...
Peter Abrahams's 1946 novel Mine Boy follows a young farm boy from the northern part of South Africa named Xuma as he moves to Johannesburg to work in a gold mine. As Xuma's heart is broken by a black woman who wishes to be white, and he is...
Although he is best known for his historical fiction novel The Book Thief, Australian author Markus Zusak has written several tremendous novels. Among those novels is I Am the Messenger (2002), which is told through the eyes of its main character,...
Written by Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a fable in novella form, which tells the story of a seagull (named Jonathan Livingston Seagull) who is trying to learn how to fly - and how to live his life as well as possible. Jonathan is...