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.
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,...
Magic's Price is an epic fantasy novel by American author Mercedes Lackey. It is the third and final novel in the Valdemar: The Last Herald Mage series and eighth in the Valdemar universe. It was published in 1990 by DAW books. A magical and...
Magic's Promise is an epic fantasy novel by American author Mercedes Lackey. It is the second novel in the Valdemar: The Last Herald Mage series and seventh in the Valdemar universe. It was published in 1990 by DAW books. A young-adult, romantic...
Magic’s Pawn is the first novel in a series called The Last Herald’s Mage. The novel centers around a Herald called Vanyel in the kingdom of Valdemar. A Herald mage is an individual possessing extraordinary psychic and magical abilities and...
The Dream House is one of South African novelist and playwright Craig Higginson's most popular novels. Published in 2015, it was adapted from a play of his entitled The Dream of the Dog (2010).
Higginson began writing the outline of a novel in...
Interior Chinatown (2020) is the second novel by American writer Charles Yu. It is the story of Willis Wu, a young Asian actor stuck playing two-dimensional caricatures like "Oriental Guy Making a Weird Face" and "Silent Henchman." Wu aspires to...
Bewilderment is a contemporary novel by American novelist Richard Powers. Published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2021, it is Powers' thirteenth book and a follow up to his 2018 novel The Overstory that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction....
The Souvenir Museum is a collection of short stories by the award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken. The stories are of a contemporary genre, and each story deals with some real-life struggle in a witty way. All the characters have come to a...
Intimacies is a novel by American author Katie Kitamura. It was published in August 2021 after Jonathan Cape acquired the rights in February of the same year. It is her fourth novel after A Separation (2017) and both share a similar tone in terms...
Abundance is a contemporary novel by American author Jakob Guanzon. Published in 2021 by Graywolf Press, it is Guanzon's debut novel. It explores social menaces in the United States like poverty, wealth inequality, justice system, drug trade,...
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a novel by American poet Honoree Fanone Jeffers, on her first outing as an author. It was published in 2021 by Harper Collins. Set in the American deep South, the novel explores African-American history before...
Written by an award-winning author, Zorrie follows a young American girl called Zorrie Underwood, who has suffered a great deal in her life. She lost both her parents to an illness, and after an aunt, who was like a mother to her, passed, Zorrie...
Matrix is a novel set in the 12th century England and follows a young french royal, cast away Marie, who was banished to become a prioress of an abbey with nuns in rural England. The reasoning behind this is because Marie is deemed unfit for...
“Still I Rise” is one of Maya Angelou’s most celebrated poems. Originally published in 1978 in Angelou’s third volume of verse, And Still I Rise, it shares its title with a play she wrote in 1976 and was written during a highly prolific time in...
"The Second Coming" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, written in 1919, several years after the end of World War I. It is named after the Christian "Second Coming," which is the Biblical prophecy that predicts Jesus's return to earth to reign...
Pablo Neruda's "Love Sonnet XVII" is a modified Italian sonnet focusing on themes of intimacy, love, and self-expression. The poem was first published in Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets, or Cien Sonetos de Amor, in 1959. Like the other poems in that...
Regarding the ever-conflicting and discussed topic of gender identity and gender roles, the author of “Female Masculinity” dives into the topic of the women who aren’t following the normative, socially accepted path of womanhood; women who...
The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood's first novel, was published in 1969 and established Margaret Atwood as one of the most important writers of the late 20th century. Atwood would go on to become famous for her use of socially conscious themes and...
The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities is a collection of ten stories presented by American author Richard Russell Riordan. He is famously known for Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series. It was published in 2021 by Rick Riordan Presents....
The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages is a book by American writer Jessi Streib. It was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. Touching on sociology, psychology, and social science, Streib explores marriage across...
The Spirit of the Beehive is a movie directed by Victor Erice. The movie is about a gullible six-year-old girl called Anna who is detached from her parents. The film was made in 1973 when Spanish directors were restricted from making films...