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 huge sweeping novel, which has never been out of print since its publication, Atlas Shrugged has become a part of the national dialogue about personal freedom, economic policy, and political philosophy in America. There have been several...
Tender is the Night (1934) is F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel. The story, primarily about human deterioration, the disintegration of love and marriage, and the mental illness that both causes and results from these troubles, was...
I Will Marry When I Want is one of the famed Kenyan playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s most revered plays. Set in post-independence Kenya, the play is a searing look at the legacies of colonialism and the myriad difficulties Kenyans faced in the...
Gennifer Albin's first novel, Crewel, explores one girl's experience navigating the dysfunctional social and political systems of a completely controlled dystopian society. Published in 2012, Crewel is the first book in the Crewel trilogy. It...
Published in 1993, Freak the Mighty is a YA novel written by American author Rodman Philbrick. The book is 160 pages in its original print, and follows the endeavors of a boy named Kevin who is nicknamed "Freak" by his classmates.
The protagonist,...
Aphra Behn’s 50-page novella The Fair Jilt details the rather bizarre incidents involved with an incredibly beautiful and seductively dangerous femme fatale named Miranda with a penchant for bringing about death and devastation upon her admirers....
Published in 1939, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was met with immediate critical and popular success when it first appeared. An American realist novel set during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck's work documents hard times...
What is the What is a 2006 novel written by Dave Eggers. While Eggars takes full authorship of the book, the story is the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Deng is a Sudanese refugee and was a member of the Lost Boys of Sudan.
After...
No Longer at Ease is Chinua Achebe's second book and part of what is commonly referred to as the African Trilogy; this includes Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi. Some critics discern...
Many critics during Mikhail Lermontov's time felt that he created Pechorin, the main character of A Hero of Our Time, in his own likeness. Besides similarities in age and occupation, characters in Pechorin's life resemble individuals in...
Charles de Secondat was a French nobleman: the Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu. Historians and literary students simply refer to him as "Montesquieu".
Born in the southern part of France, Charles de Secondat lived from 1689 to 1755....
What We All Long For is a novel written by the Canadian writer Dionne Brad. While she is generally known for her lyrical work, her novel quickly became popular not only in Canada but also internationally. What we long for is the author’s first...
Touching Spirit Bear, published in 2001, is an account of a young boy's experience with violence, forgiveness, and nature as he is banished to a remote Alaskan island as punishment for a violent crime. During this time, he is confronted by a rare...
Friday Night Lights is a novel by famed sports writer and journalist H.G. “ Buzz” Bissinger. The novel was published in 1990 and surrounds the Permian Panther’s 1988 high school football season. His landmark novel has sold roughly 2 million copies...
Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman is perhaps the Nobel-Prize-winning playwright's greatest and most enduring work. Published in 1975, the work is often studied and performed in colleges and universities, as well as staged worldwide.
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The Real Inspector Hound is a one-act play modeled after the parlor mystery genre that was extremely popular at the time. Written between 1961-62, it is considered one of Tom Stoppard’s early works. The play is actually a play-within-a-play: the...
George Etherege’s Man of Mode is one of the most renowned plays of Restoration England. Critic Gamini Salgado wrote, “Its chief merit consists in the uncompromising realism with which it investigates the implications of Restoration libertinism.”
...Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life, was born on June 19, 1945 in Alabama. He grew up in a very academic-focused household as his father was an aerospace engineer. As a teenager, he ran the local newspaper route and served as a Boy Scout for...
Published in 1981, "In the Counselor's Waiting Room" is a representative example of the poetry of Bettie Sellers. Her verse often paints quick narrative snapshots of the people of Appalachia, their history, culture and the influence of religion on...
Marie Lu spent most of her youth writing, although Legend is her first published novel. In writing Legend, Lu was inspired by the stage version of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables. Hugo's work and its subsequent adaptations follow Jean Valjean,...
The famous book "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" was written by anthropologist Bronisaw Malinowski. This book contains the experiences and observations that Malinowski made while conducting fieldwork in the southwest Pacific Ocean's Trobriand...
Nietzsche regarded Thus Spoke Zarathustra to be one of his most important works. Ultimately, it is a work about overcoming the self. It combines inverted allusions to the Bible with Greek mythology and ancient Persian religion.
Nietzsche composed...
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Downis the poignant story of a young Hmong girl suffering from epilepsy who is caught in the cultural chasm between her family and her rationalist American doctors. The story shows the tragic consequences of a...
