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.
In 1964 Shel Silverstein was a uniquely prolific and productive writer of children’s books. On the heels of his first such book published a year earlier, 1964 saw the publication of four books for his juvenile audience including perennial...
James Moloney is an Australian-born writer, whose work is largely aimed at children and young readers, although he has written novels for adults. Since his first book was published in 1992, Moloney has been nominated for a large number of literary...
In Time is a 2011 sci-fi action thriller written and directed by Andrew Niccol. The film was produced by Marc Abraham, Eric Newman along with Niccol and was made for an estimated $40,000,000 budget and returned $173,930,596 in gross sales...
Author and cancer doctor Rachel Naomi Remen's 2001 novel My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging tells readers stories of kindness and joy. She tells a story about her Rabbi grandpa, a man that saw life in a very...
For many relatively young readers, Stephen Chbosky's novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of the most important books of their lives. Naturally, when a film version of the 1999 novel was first announced - originally with the legendary John...
The Martian, a science fiction survival film directed by Ridley Scott, is the big screen adaptation of the 2011 novel of the same name, written by Andy Weir. It tells the story of Mark Watney, a botanist turned astronaut, played by Matt Damon, who...
"Shakespeare Behind Bars" is a movie documentary that tells the story of the most unlikely Shakespeare Company in the world. It was one of only sixteen documentaries out of six hundred and twenty four submissions to be selected for its world...
There is an expression about saving the best till last; this is exactly what Jim Crace did when he penned his final novel, Harvest. Even before he had finished writing the novel, Crace announced that it would be his final one. He stuck doggedly to...
"El Canto de mio Cid", otherwise known as "The Poem of the Cid", is the oldest Castilian epic poem that is preserved today. It is based on a real-life historical event and its hero is also taken from history. El Cid was a Castilian nobleman and...
Born and raised in the northern state of Michigan, Marge Piercy is a writer and poet, a lot of whose work engages with political question and social dilemmas. Her novel Woman on the Edge of Time, published in 1976, is no exception to that rule.
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"The Destructors" was initially published in a British photo-journalism magazine called "Picture Post". It was commonly considered to be Britain's answer to "Life" magazine. Graham Greene, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, was...
Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman was a sideshow then a headlining attraction for audiences in Britain in the Nineteenth Century, billed as the Hottentot Venus, and it is at this time in her life that we meet her in Suzan-Lori Parks' play. Written in...
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist. He is best known for his ideas on postmodernism, simulation and hyperreality.
Baudrillard's work, including "Simulacra and Simulation", critiques the impact...
Kathleen Raine was a British poet and scholar and a founding member of the Temenos Academy. She was interested in different types of spirituality such as Platonism and Neoplatonism as well as her scholarly writing on other poets.
She wrote a large...
Grace Nichols was born in Guyana in 1950 and grew up in a small village until her eighth birthday. She went to college at the University of Guyana, and received a degree in Communications. She held multiple writing related jobs before immigrating...
Tenth of December is a short story collection written by acclaimed American author George Saunders. It contains the stories "Victory Lap," "Sticks," "Puppy," "Escape from Spiderhead," "Exhortation," "Al Roosten," "The Semplica Girl Diaries,"...
Quicksand is a novel written by renowned author Nella Larsen, published in 1928. As there are direct links and correlations between the life of Nella Larsen and fictional character Helga Crane, both of whom are mixed race, this book can also be...
Wallace Thurman's The Blacker the Berry was published in 1929, and is looked at today as one of the key novels in Harlem Renaissance Literature. At the time of its publication it was considered to be groundbreaking, because Thurman had the courage...
Home to Harlem (1928) is author Claude McKay's first published novel. It tells the story of young Jake Brown, the protagonist of the novel, after he deserts the United States Army and heads off to London and a writer who immigrates to Haiti after...
Exit West is Mohsin Hamid's 2017 follows a young couple, Saeed and Nadia, who live in a city in the midst of a civil war. Fearing for their safety, they are finally forced to flee the city through a series of doors that lead to other parts of the...
Tarr is a classic fiction written by Wyndham Lewis and published in 1918. It is considered his first novel. Lewis is an English painter and writer and is known for his Vorticist movement. He was one of the founders of Vorticism, which disagreed...
Francisco de Quevedo (Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñes Villegas) was born in Madrid, Spain 1580. He died 64 years old in 1645. He was a nobleman, writer and politician. Fracisco de Quevedo is known as one of the most important writers of...
Point Omega is a novella written by American novelist and playwright Don DeLillo. Released in 2010, it is DeLillo's fifteenth published work.
The short book recounts the tale of Richard Elster, a scholar who served in the military to write about...
A Very English Scandal is a non-fiction, true crime novel by John Preston, arts editor and television critic of the Sunday Telegraph. Published in May 2016, it tells the story of the Jeremy Thorpe Affair, a scandal that occurred in the...