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.
William Dean Howells is an American writer and critic who lived between 1837 and 1920. He is also known for his influence and contribution to the printing business, something he did since an early age. The first piece of writing written by Howell...
Cao Xueqin(Tsao Hsueh-Chin)'s Dream of the Red Chamber, also translated as The Story of the Stone, is widely considered the greatest and most studied of Chinese classical literature. Initially written in the mid 1700s, the work has since been...
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice was the sixth play written by Jim Cartwright. It. was staged at the Royal National Theatre in London and debuted in June of 1992. It was later staged on Broadway in 1994 and was adapted into a film in 1998, before...
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was co-written in 2008 by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, Annie Barrows, after Shaffer became ill with cancer and couldn't finish writing the book herself. Guernsey was Shaffer's first novel and...
The Hero and the Crown is a 1984 fantasy novel by Robin McKinley and a prequel to her 1982 novel, The Blue Sword, in which the protagonist of the former novel was first featured as a legendary character. The Hero and the Crown won the1985 Newbery...
Small Island is a book written by Andrea Levy in 2004. The novel revolves around World War II and the status of immigrants in Britain after the War. The story tells of a British couple who had been separated when the husband went to fight in the...
Gates of Fire is a historical fiction novel written by Steven Pressfield in 1998. The book revolves mainly around the war between the Greek forces against the imposing Persian army. The Persian forces are being led by the King called Xerxes and he...
For the uninitiated, Frederick Ogden Nash—or just plain ol’ Ogden Nash as most of his many fans refer to him—could in some ways be considered the psychic twin brother of the other mother that gave birth to Dr. Seuss. The poetry of Nash relies far...
The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen are distinct from those compiled by the Brothers Grimm. Not due to their content so much as their provenance. A little known fact among those who are familiar with the stories of little mermaids and ugly...
The Ebb-Tide was written by noted author Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne, his stepson. The novel would be published the very same year that Stevenson died, 1894. Had Stevenson lived, it is questionable whether his...
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a children’s novel written by the American writer and illustrator Grace Lin. The novel was published in 2008 and was received extremely well by the public. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the first book...
A Wind in the Door is a fantasy novel in the Time Quintet series by Madeleine L'Engle. It was published on January 1st, 1973, by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It is a companion book to L'Engle's 1963 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. It is followed by its...
One of the first indications that William Cullen Bryant would become an American poet to be reckoned with occurred when Bryant was barely into his teenage years. “The Embargo” was not just a work of verse that revealed the early promise of a young...
Closer is the second play by Patrick Marber. It first premiered in 1997 in London at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre. The play is centrally about truth, and Marber blends modern and post-modern styles in order to keep the audience...
Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" is a portrait of a failing marriage in the confines of 1950's surburbia. Dealing with themes of love, hate, conformity and madness, it is a realisitc and harrowing novel that drives home issues of identity and...
The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche, is a seminal work published in 1895 which challenged established religious and moral norms. Nietzsche aimed to deconstruct religious dogmas, particularly those of Christianity, during a time when designating...
A poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou published a number of autobiographies, essay collections, and poetry collections. It is due to her unique ability to reach out to a large subset of Americans with her poetry and prose that she won...
We The Living is the first novel by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. It is the story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and was her first public statement against communism. In the foreword of the book Rand observes that We The Living is the...
As a young damsel, Anne Kingsmill was one of the ladies-in-waiting at the court of King Charles II. She served as maid of honor at the marriage of Mary of Modena to the Duke of York. Later, the Duke of York would become better known to history as...
The Master Butcher's Singing Club was written in 2003 by Louise Erdirch, a native American writer. It revolves around German American traditions and culture, which is part of Erdrich's personal heritage.
The book follows the lives of Fidelis...
Let the Great World Spin was written by Colum McCann and published in 2009 by Random House. Its inception occurred shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, in which the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center were destroyed....
Survivor, Chuck Palahnuik's second novel, after the massively popular and cult classic debut of Fight Club, was released in 1999, keeping with the the author's favoured genre of trangressional fiction.
The book addresses the topics of capitalism...
Written by the Australian author Bryce Courtenay in 1989, The Power of One became a huge success, being translated into 18 languages, selling more than eight million copies, and transforming into a Hollywood film. It is categorized as a...
My Side of the Mountain was written in 1959 by Jean Craighead George. It is a heartwarming story about a boy, Sam Gribley, who is fed up with city life and decides to run away to live in the Catskill Mountains with only forty dollars, a penknife,...