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.
The Heart of the Matter (1948) is one of Graham Greene's most famous novels. Critics consider it to be part of Greene's "Catholic Triology" alongside The Power and the Glory (1940) and The End of the Affair (1951). The Heart of the Matter has...
Chinua Achebe penned "Civil Peace" in 1971, depicting through it the effects of the Nigerian Civil War on a man and his family. The War, which began in 1967 with the secession of several Southeastern provinces from Nigeria, led to an intensive...
Though Vonnegut is now known primarily as a novelist, his short stories were quite popular during the 1950s and 60's, in leading magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post.
Vonnegut began writing short fiction while working in...
The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published in 1969. After its publication, the novel attained great popularity, and it was just a year later that it was rewarded as the year’s Best Novel in Hugo...
"Everything line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democraticsocialism, as I understand it."
So spoke George Orwell, in one of his better known essays, Why I Write...
Arthur Schnitzler is perhaps best known for his novel Dream Story because that novel was adapted into the final film made by Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut. The dreamlike, ambiguous stream-of-consciousness feel to that film in which certain...
The Ugly American was published by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick in 1958. In 1959, Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas rose from his seat inside the Capitol, stood up and proceeded to criticize the novel for characterizing American...
The Reivers is a novel written by William Faulkner and published in 1962. Faulkner is one of the most famous writers in American history, having won more than one Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Reivers won one of these prizes, in 1963. Faulkner...
By the time Mary Stewart published her standalone novel on the Arthurian legend titled The Prince and the Pilgrim, the first entry in what would come to be known as her Merlin Trilogy had already been around for a quarter of a century. The Prince...
The Wicked Day, published in 1983 and by Mary Stewart, is the fourth book of the quintet series. This series depicts a twist on the original King Arthur and Merlin stories. This book tells the story of King Arthur and Mordred, who is actually a...
The Last Enchantment is a fantasy novel written by Mary Stewart in 1979. The story revolves around the reign of Arthur Pendragon of Britain, and the novel is told from the perspective of a clairvoyant and the Wizard Merlin. In the story, Arthur is...
The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart was published in 1973. As part of the series the Arthurian Legends, it is the sequel to The Crystal Cave. This story, in first person point-of-view from Merlin, tells the story of the birth and taking care of King...
The Crystal Cave is a fantasy novel written by Mary Stewart in 1970. The book mainly focuses on the character of Merlin, from the Arthurian legends, before he became the legendary magician. The Romans have recently left Britain and the kingdom is...
The Friends, by Rosa Guy, is the first book of a trilogy. It was published December 18, 1995, by Laurel Leaf. The other two books are called Ruby and Edith Jackson. The Friends is a novel about a little girl who lived in the sunlit West Indies...
Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones is a historical fiction account of the 1937 Parsley Massacre, as seen through the eyes of Amabelle Desir.
The novel centers around the Parsley Massacre of 1937, when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo...
Published in 1950, Elizabeth Yates's Amos Fortune, Free Man is a biographical novel which follows the story of an African prince sold into slavery who later buys his freedom and starts a business in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. The book has been...
Noted Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev produced just one work for the stage which can be said to have had the same impact as his greatest books and that play is A Month in the Country. Although Turgenev wrapped up the finishing touches on his...
In 1995, Peter Weir was looking for his next project but found every script that crossed his desk to be "either predictable or derivative" (Weinraub). Then, a special project caught his interest - Andrew Niccol's screenplay for The Truman Show,...
No one could imagine that frequent visits to the Detroit zoo might be so inspiring and mesmerizing that some time later that frequent visitor would start working on the series of books about the secret world hidden in the zoo. However, it is true...
The Indian in the Cupboard is a children’s fantasy novel published in 1980 by British writer Lynne Reid Bank. The book contains illustrations in the British version by Robin Jacques with Brock Cole taking over the visual imagery for the U.S....
One of Zola’s first full-length novels, Thérèse Raquin remains one of his best-known. When he sat down to write the story of Thérèse, her acquaintances, and her descent into murder and suicide, Zola was only twenty-seven years old. In 1866, he had...
Cloudstreet is Australian writer Tim Winton’s fifth novel, published in 1991. Winton wrote the novel in longhand, much of it inside a cafe in Paris. One day he was traveling by bus with his wife and small child and the handwritten manuscript,...
The kernel for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came from a hypothetical question that Michel Gondry's friend, artist Pierre Bismuth, proposed over dinner: What if you received a card in the mail that stated you had been erased from someone's...
Breaking News (A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World) was written by author Martin Fletcher. It was published during 2008 by Thomas Dunne Books. Fletcher shares his phenomenal story of...
