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.
A tightly constructed, psychologically incisive commentary on race relations in the early decades of the 20th century, Passing (1929) is the single best-known work of African-American novelist Nella Larsen. On one level, the book is a study of a...
The Scorch Trials is the second book of the Maze Runner trilogy. It was written by James Dashner soon after The Maze Runner, the first installment of the trilogy. It was published on September 18, 2010, by Delacorte Press. No one knows if it is a...
Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of its author’s most beloved works. Engaging the themes of space and time, geology, travel, and discovery, it is a fantastic fusion of science and adventure. This book is part of the series...
The Witches was written in 1983 by famed children’s author Roald Dahl. At this point, Dahl had written many of his most well known works, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. The book was dedicated to Roald Dahl...
Outliers was written by Malcolm Gladwell and published in 2008. Gladwell wrote the book to investigate the factors that lead to high levels of success; as Gladwell believes that singular and unusual things “always [make] the best stories,” his...
The third installment in Ally Condie's Matched trilogy, Reached follows Cassia Reyes, Xander Carrow, and Ky Markham as they fight for their right to choose in the dystopian Society turned fallible Rising turned medical nightmare. The story is told...
A View from the Bridge is one of Arthur Miller’s most famous plays, renowned for its intensity of passion and echoes of Greek tragedy.
The work grew out of Miller’s fascination with Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood only a few blocks away from...
The BFG was written in 1982 by Roald Dahl. Dahl was a well-known author at this point, having already published popular books such as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Danny, the Champion of the World. These books...
Children of Men is a British-American dystopian, science-fiction, thriller film directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and released in 2006. The screenplay is loosely based on P.D. James' 1992 novel The Children of Men, though there are some...
Lawyer, scholar, and activist Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, first published in 2010, is seen as nothing less than a phenomenon – a book that galvanized the debate about race in the criminal justice system in a way that had never been done...
Published in 2006, Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story confronts weighty issues—in particular, teen depression and suicide—through an unexpected combination of dark comedy and abiding hope. The novel is set in the present day, and is narrated...
Rear Window is based on a story from the February 1942 issue of Dime Detective Magazine called "It Had to be Murder", written by Cornell Woolrich (under the pseudonym William Irish). Alfred Hitchcock, who was a longtime fan of Woolrich's pulp...
Thirteen Reasons Why (stylized as TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY) by Jay Asher is a fictional Young Adult novel published in 2007 by Penguin Books. In July of 2011, the paperback edition became the #1 seller on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Asher's...
Americanah is the third novel of author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2013 after the success of her novels Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Like her two prior novels, Americanah focuses on the lives of Nigerians,...
Wise Blood was the first of two novels written by Flannery O'Connor. Begun in 1947, some of its chapters appeared individually in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review, and Partisan Review in 1948 and 1949 before it was published in its complete novel form...
Gone Girl was released on June 5, 2012, and was Flynn's third novel. Gone Girl was the #1 New York Times Bestseller for eight straight weeks and spent more than one hundred weeks on the bestseller list all together. By the end of 2012, Gone Girl...
The Girl on the Train is Paula Hawkins's fifth novel, but her first popular success. Unlike her previous four works, romantic comedies written under a pen name, The Girl on the Train takes on the darker themes of domestic violence and drug abuse....
Henry James began writing The American while living in Paris in the winter of 1875-1876. The novel first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in twelve serialized, monthly installments from June 1876 to May 1877. In May 1877, as the serialization...
Facundo is writer and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s most famous work, and a fascinating example of imaginative nonfiction. It is considered one of the premier works of Latin American literature and is read and studied widely there.
While...
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani, born on July 12, 1997. She always liked education, which wasn't something the Taliban liked at her time. The Taliban forbade girls from education, but Malala advocated for girls' education rights. This led to the...
A novella, Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad’s most famous work and a foundational text on the subject of colonialism. Heart of Darkness is based in part on a trip that Conrad took through modern-day Congo during his years as a sailor. He...
The Master and Margarita is a satire of the Stalin period in the Soviet Union, which was established ten years before Bulgakov started to write the novel. In the late 1920s, the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), led by Leopold...
The Praise of Folly is one of the most important books of Renaissance Humanism and one of the most perfect expressions of the sentiments and philosophy of its author, Desiderius Erasmus. Its historical importance cannot be overestimated; the...
Leif Enger wrote this best-selling novel in 2001. It is about the Land family’s journey to be reunited after a violent act forced them apart. The narrator, Reuben Land, is an 11 year old with severe asthma who perseveres through many difficulties....
