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.
Nick and Charlie is author Alice Oseman's novella—first published in 2015 as an eBook and in 2020 as a paperback book—which continues the story of Nick and Charlie. At first glance, Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple: they are incredibly...
Author Alice Oseman is best known for two characters that she created: Charlie and Nick. Those characters (and other characters in Solitaire) were so compelling for potential publishers that a bidding war emerged for the right to publish Solitaire...
Lightlark, Alex Aster's novel for young adults, was initially published in late August 2022. As its title suggests, Lightlark is set on the island of Lightlark. Every 100 years like clockwork, Lightlark hosts what they call "Centennial." During...
Published in late 2022, author Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business is set in the 1850s during the Gold Rush in California. Smiley's novel follows two prostitutes named Eliza and Jean who try to find their way in a state and country which is on the...
Daughter in Exile was published on January 31, 2023 by HarperVia. The follow-up to Adjapon's critically-acclaimed The Teller of Secrets, Daughter in Exile follows a young woman named Lola who immigrates from Senegal to the United States after she...
A Country You Can Leave, author Asale's Angel-Ajani's novel set to be published on February 27, 2023, follows a mother, named Yevgenia, and her teenaged daughter, named Lara, who are struggling to survive in the harsh California dessert. The...
Jane Harper's Exiles: A Novel was first published in November 2022 by Flatiron Books. Set in Australia, Exiles: A Novel follows an Australian federal investigator named Aaron Falk, who is on the way to a small town in wine country so that he could...
After Salman Rushdie was viscously attacked at an event in New York, few thought that he would live and even fewer thought that he would have a career again. As a result of the attack, which some have speculated was sanctioned and brought into...
Rebecca Makkai is an American author specializing in novels and short stories. Makkai was born in 1978 in Stokie, Illinois, USA. In her pursuit of education, Makkai attended Lake Forest Academy and later proceeded to Middlebury College and Lee...
River Sing Me Home, published in 2023, is the debut novel of British author Eleanor Shearer. Inspired by the real but often overlooked histories of emancipation in the Caribbean, the novel combines historical realism with lyrical storytelling. It...
Natalie L. Hynes was born in 1974 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and graduated from Cambridge University. Before venturing into her writing career, Hynes worked s as a comedian in several television stations as both a comedian and a panelist. When...
Empire of Wild is a novel by Cherie Dimaline, first published in 2019. Set in Canada, Empire of Wild tells the story of a young indigenous woman named Joan Beausoliel, who has spent the past year searching for her husband, named Victor after he...
Author Cherie Dimaline's VenCo: A Novel was first published on February 7, 2023. VenCo follows a young millennial named Lucky St. James who lives in a small apartment in Toronto with her grandmother, named Stella. One night, Lucky hearts the calls...
Acclaimed author Cherie Dimaline's Hunting by Stars was first published in late 2021. Hunting by Stars is set in a world in chaos. Because of natural disasters and different diseases, much of the human population has been decimated. And as a...
Dear Edward is a novel published by Ann Napolitano in 2020. On May 12, 2010, Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed as it was flying into Tripoli's airport, just a little over a thousand yards short of the runway. The entire crew and all but one...
Abaddon’s Gate, the third installment of The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, was published on June 4, 2013, in the United States. The series is renowned for blending hard science fiction, political intrigue, and philosophical inquiry,...
Caliban's War is the second novel in James S.A. Corey's (the pen name for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) "The Expanse" series. Caliban's War takes place in three places: Ganymede, Earth, and a spaceship. The story of Ganymede follows a...
In the distant future, humanity has conquered much of the solar system. The Earth, which is ruled by the United Nations, is at odds with a group ruled by the Martian Congressional Republic. That is the set-up for James S.A. Corey's (the pen name...
"Mean Time" is a poem originally published in Carol Ann Duffy's 1993 collection Mean Time. It describes the experiences of a speaker suffering in the aftermath of a breakup. As the speaker wanders the streets on a winter evening, she muses about...
The Roaring Girl is a fictional dramatization of the real life of Mary Frith, a seventeenth-century virago (or masculine woman) with a reputation for crime, cross-dressing, and general societal insubordination. By the time Frith – later known as...
Jennie Livingston's idea for Paris Is Burning began a number of years before the film's 1990 release. As a photography and painting student from Yale, Livingston became involved in news media after college. It was through this role that she...
Shakespeare lived in a time of great transformation for Western Europe. New advances in science were overturning ancient ideas about astronomy and physics. The discovery of the Americas had transformed the European conception of the world....
Henry IV, Part One first appeared in print in 1598, when two separate quartos were made. The second quarto serves as the standard text for most modern editions, and was followed closely by five more quartos in 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, and 1622. The...
With Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, Blake introduced a new method of printing his own books. Blake would print his poems by hand onto copper plates, illustrate each poem with drawings, and then color the prints by hand. Blake claimed to...