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.
One Last Stop is a romance novel written by the bestselling author Casey McQuiston that was published in June 2021. Her sophomore book akin to the debut Red, White & Royal Blue delves into the romantic relationships in the LGBTQ communities....
Palmares is the long-awaited epic novel by American author Gayl Jones. Published in 2021 by Beacon Press, the novel had been in the works for almost forty years. Set in 17th-century Brazil, a group of slaves escapes servitude to build a thriving...
Published in 2021, The Book of Form and Emptiness stands as one of Ozeki's most profound and inventive works, blending realism, philosophy, and metafiction to explore how people make meaning in a noisy, material world.
The story follows Benny Oh,...
The first installment of the “Between Earth and Sky” series Black Sun is a high fantasy novel authored by Rebecca Roanhorse. It was published on 13 October 2021 and nominated for multiple awards including the 2021 Locus Award, Nebula Award, and...
Great Circle is a novel by American novelist Maggie Shipstead. Published in 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf, the novel explores the lives of two women in parallel. Marian Graves is a 20th century aviator who goes missing in 1950, while attempting to fly...
Project Hail Mary is a sci-fi novel by American novelist Andy Weir. Published in 2021 by Ballantine Books, the novel explores a near future event when Ryland Grace is catapulted into the farthest edges of space, on a mission to save humanity. The...
Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses is a young-adult novel set in a parallel world in which the native people of Africa (Cafrique in the novel) colonized the rest of the world. Crosses (dark-skinned descendants of people from Cafrique) are...
“Where the Dead Sit Talking” is a novel that intertwines the Native American traditional aspects with a story about a young boy, coming from a troubled family, struggling to grow up and find his identity and place in the world. The young boy,...
“American Rust” is a novel set in a fictional town in Pennsylvania, and it explores the struggles of survival and financial decline, as well as intricate familial and friendship relationships. The novel sets up the plot with the information that...
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), born Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes y Basoalto, is one of the best-known poets of the twentieth century, and is regarded as one of the finest Spanish-language poets of his time: writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez famously...
“The Description of Cooke-ham” is the last poem in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), a book which made Lanyer the first Englishwoman to publish a substantial volume of poetry. “Cooke-ham” is the first published country-house poem,...
Petals of Blood is a 1977 novel by Ngugi wa Thiong'o set in post-independence Kenya; its title derives from a line in Derek Walcott’s poem, “The Swamp.” The story centers on four characters whose lives are drastically changed as a result of the...
"The Dictators," a 1950 poem by the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda, explores the power structures, inequalities, and violent conflicts in an unnamed dictatorship. It depicts ordinary individuals' suffering and death, juxtaposing these horrific scenes...
Written by Roald Dahl, Danny, the Champion of the World is a 1975 children's book about an impoverished English boy who helps his father poach pheasants from a villainous wealthy landowner.
After his mother dies when he is four months old, Danny...
A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle is a masque written by English poet John Milton and performed in 1634. Now known simply as Comus after the play's antagonist, the masque was originally performed on Michaelmas—a feast celebrating the archangel...
The Round House is author Louise Erdrich's fourteenth novel, and it was published in 2012. It is sometimes considered a thematic sequel to her 2008 novel, The Plague of the Doves, due to their shared focus on the concepts of justice and revenge....
Of Grammatology is a three-part philosophical text by French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Originally titled De la grammatologie, it was published in 1967 by Les Éditions de Minuit in France. It was later translated for the English world by Gayatri...
“Eat Drink Man Woman” is a Taiwanese comedy movie that revolves around a family dealing with daily life and drama that comes with it. The title of the movie is a reference to one of Confucius teachings about the acceptance of the human natural...
"Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market" is a 1957 poem by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, describing the encounter between a human speaker and a dead tuna at a vegetable market. The speaker addresses the tuna with a blend of awe and sadness, describing...
John Donne is so widely quoted that he ranks near the top of the canon of well-known authors, not far behind his near contemporary, William Shakespeare. Perhaps his best-known line, from Meditation 17 in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, a prose...
The novel now known as Roxana was published in 1724; it is the third and last of Defoe's major novels, following Robinson Crusoe in 1719, and Moll Flanders in 1722. The original title was The Fortunate Mistress: Or, A History of the Life and Vast...
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a novel by the author who draws inspiration from many classical tales, and re-tells them in a new light. This novel is a re-telling of the classic Cinderella, and as the title suggests, focuses on one of...
For almost the first decade of its existence, Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was like a precious little secret treasure held dearly by those in the know. Fans of the novel tended to be...
Neverwhere is a novel by the famous author Neil Gaiman, and what is interesting about it is that it was written and published as a companion to a TV series. A few episodes into the show of the same name, the author decided to publish the novel,...