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.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is a novel written by James De Mille. It is his most famous and most well read book. After De Mille passed away, Harper’s Weekly published the work in a series and then in 1888, it was published in...
Published in 2008, Unaccustomed Earth is Jhumpa Lahiri’s second collection of short stories. Characteristic of Lahiri’s work, Unaccustomed Earth explores the Indian American characters’ lives and culturally mixed society. It won the 2008 Frank...
Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was first published in 1943. By 1945 it had already been adapted into a very successful movie. Then, by 1952, the story was transformed into a hit musical on Broadway. What was the reason for such...
Shadows was John Cassavetes' directorial debut. The idea for the film grew out of an improvisation from a class he was teaching at his drama school, "The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop." It involved a young African-American woman who was very...
Characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as the most unpretentious masterpiece of the American literary tradition, The Dollmaker is a novel by Harriete Arnow that was published in 1954 and proved to be a pathbreaking novel. This novel was nominated for...
Fly Away Peter is a book written by David Malouf in 1982. The book mainly revolves around the story of Jim Saddler who has an advanced understanding of the bird life of an estuary near his home. A man called Ashley Crowther inherits the farm which...
Angela Carter is an English novelist born on May 7, 1940 in Eastbourne, England. As a child, she was raised in a family that valued art and literature. Her father was a journalist, and she followed in his footsteps by writing for the Croydon...
Initially transcribed sometime around 1164, Erec and Enide is not just the first of the great Chivalric Romances by Chretien de Troyes, it is one of the earliest poems about King Arthur and is usually regarded as the first Arthurian work to...
Lone Star is a richly layered ensemble piece featuring a complex plot and complicated characters written and directed by John Sayles. The convoluted plot is a murder mystery in which much darker elements of political corruption are slowly revealed...
The Unredeemed Captive is a novel written by John Putnam Demos that was published in 2011. It was nominated for the National Book Award and won the Francis Parkman Prize. Demos is also a historian in addition to being an author, and he has won the...
Jennifer Finney Boylan is an American novelist and activist born on June 22, 1958 in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Although Boylan was born a biological male, she felt as though her natural body did not fit her true personality. It was a gnawing...
Dalton Conley was born in 1969 to income-poor parents (from middle class backgrounds) who had moved to New York's Lower East Side before the spike in drugs and crime during the following decade. The neighbourhood was poverty striken, and, with the...
An Ornithologist's Guide to Life: Stories was written by award-winning author Ann Hood. Hood is the bestselling author of The Book That Matters Most, The Knitting Circle, An Italian Wife, Comfort, and several other works. In this extraordinary...
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a Swedish novel that was translated from its original language into English. It is at one level a gripping, chilling suspense novel about a crime that occurred decades before, and the naive young journalist who...
David Pelzer, in the second of his three autobiographical books, describes his life as an adolescent who has been taken from his mother in what contemporary court documents call the worst case of child abuse in the history of California in which...
Snow in August is a novel published in 1997 and written by Pete Hamill, who is an American journalist and writer who specializes in novels and essays. Through his extensive travels all around the country and around the world, Hamill is a well...
Carl Degler is an American author born on February 6, 1921 in Newark, New Jersey. At a young age, Degler demonstrated an interest in history and literature. He attended Upsala College and earned a BA in history and later his master’s degree at...
I Am David is a children's novel written originally in Danish, the native tongue of its author Anne Holm. Holm was a journalist before turning her hand to writing a book. She wrote it because she felt that children had the capacity to love a book...
In 1867, Scottish writer penned an essay which was published in the New York Tribune titled “Shooting Niagara: And After?” Although it may not seem obvious to modern sensibilities, the controversial essay was a quite sharpened arrow lodged...
American Pastoral is a novel written by Philip Roth and was published in 1997. It is the twenty-second novel by the author. The story explores the development of American history since the late years of the 1940s to the social commotions of during...
Alias Grace was inspired by a real-life Canadian murder case. Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, were killed on 23 July 1843. Kinnear was shot, Nancy was strangled, and both bodies were dumped in Kinnear's cellar. Nancy was...
The Year of the Hangman is a novel that was written by Gary Blackwood and published in 2002. This novel is a historical fiction work that is geared towards young adults. Blackwood has authored many books for younger readers, and they have all been...
John Cornford’s most anthologized poem is “Full Moon at Tierz” No poet ever wants to have their entire body of work boiled down to just one single expression of their talent, but the inescapable truth is that if you get “Full Moon at Tierra” then...