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.
"John Archer's Nose" is a short story by the African American author Rudolph Fisher. The story was originally published in 1935 in the Metropolitan Magazine. The story is the sole companion work of his most famous novel, The Conjure-Man Dies. In...
Rudolph Fisher only wrote his short story City of Refuge because he wanted to read something that was an accurate representation of day-to-day life in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. :The story first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in...
The Walls of Jericho is the debut novel of author and physician Rudolph Fisher. The book, originally published in 1928, inspired Langston Hughes to title Fisher one of the wittiest authors of the Harlem Renaissance. Fisher is well known for his...
The Conjure Man Dies is a novel written in 1932 by African American author Rudolph Fisher. It tells the curious story of a mystic who is murdered, only to apparently come back to life. 'N. Frimbo is discovered dead at his conjure table and his...
Debbie: An Epic is a book of poetry written by poet Lisa Robertson. This book was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1998. In writing this text, Robertson was influenced by other epic texts, such as Virgil's Aeneid.
Praised...
Thomas Cromwell was an English lawyer who was Henry VIII's chief minister for eight years, orchestrating such things as the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the creation of the Church of England which was founded almost...
The Glass Hotel is the fifth novel penned by Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel. One literary critic described the work as "a jigsaw puzzle that was missing its box"; the novel tells the story of two siblings whose lives are a mixture of...
This eye-opening book offers an analysis of the cross and the lynching tree as religious and cultural symbols in American history. These symbols are paralleled, connected and contrasted in the text, and are ultimately shown to reveal the dark side...
Originally published in French in 1947, The Ethics of Ambiguity is the second non-fiction publication by Simone de Beauvoir. In her book, she claims that humans are naturally born "free" because of their since of self-awareness, among other...
In his 1884 satirical novella, Flatland, English school teacher Edwin Abbott contends that Victorian society is divided into distinct classes and that the main goal of everyone is to climb the social ladder as quickly as possible. However,...
Originally published in 2015, Fish in a Tree is a New York Times bestselling novel by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. The novel follows the inspiring story of Ally, a troublemaking middle-schooler who has dyslexia. Because of this, she is unable to read, and...
British author Doris Lessing wrote the short novel The Fifth Child in 1998. It tells the story of a happily married couple, Harriet and David, who already have four children, but whose lives become fractured and difficult after the birth of Ben,...
The Golden Age is a novel written by Award-winning Australian author Joan London. One of her notable works includes the award-winning Gilgamesh. The Golden Age was published in 2014 by Random House Australia Publishers. The Golden Age won the 2015...
Written by acclaimed children's author Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon (released in 2016) tells the story of a young girl named Luna. Luna, though, is special. Because she was raised by a witch and was often around magic, Luna one days...
Originally published in 1925, "The Gardener" is a story written by British-Indian author Rudyard Kipling and published in France. The story follows the life of main character Helen Turrell, who becomes pregnant out of wedlock in India, which, at...
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem is a book by Moustafa Bayoumi published in 2008. The book chronicles the story of seven Americans that had immigrated to the country from Arab nations. Living in New York City, they were deeply impacted by the...
A Hope in the Unseen is a novel written by Ron Suskind, describing the experiences of a student called Cedric Jennings as he navigates high school and college as an African American student. This novel is mostly set during the 1990s and reveals...
Originally published in 2005, A History of the World in Six Glasses is a non-fiction book by English author Thomas Standage. The book chronicles the history of humankind through six distinct beverages, beginning with beer. Beer was invented...
Ralph Waldo Emerson published a collection titled simply Essays: First Series in 1841. The book was comprised of a dozen essays and set the template for Emerson’s preference in book-length publications to come with its structure composed of...
Heroes is a novel written by Robert Cormier and was published in 1998. The novel is concerned with the impact of World War II, including the emotional, physical and psychological effects. It is also influenced by other historical events, including...
The Happiest Refugee was originally published in 2010 as a memoir by Anh Do. The memoir tells of the journey Do and his family took to escape the war-torn communist country of Vietnam. The family had to sail across the Pacific Ocean, and...
Annie Proulx wrote The Half-Skinned Deer for an anthology of short stories called Off the Beaten Path. It was inspired by a visit she had made to a preserve run by the Nature Conservancy after they had invited her to look around the park and to...
Written by husband-wife team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky (published in September 2009) is a non-fiction book about advocacy and education. In it, Kristof and WuDunn aim to enlighten readers about the serious problems women...
