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.
Heart of a Dog is one of the best examples of Bulgakov's criticisms of life in the Soviet Union. Written when Bulgakov was 33 years old, it was first introduced to the public in March 1925 in a Moscow apartment with a gathering of approximately 50...
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You is a "remixed" version of Ibram X. Kendi's award-winning history book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). Kendi's 2016 Stamped, which won the National Book...
First published in 1680, “The Disappointment” is a poem about an unfortunate sexual encounter between Lisander and Cloris, a shepherd and shepherdess in the countryside. When Lisander is unable to maintain an erection, Cloris runs away in...
The Federalist Papers is a treatise on free government in peace and security. It is the outstanding American contribution to the literature on constitutional democracy and federalism, and a classic of Western political thought.
The Federalist...
The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice is a novel by Wilkie Collins. It was originally published in 1879 and since then there have been other editions published by Borgo Press in 2002 in London, England. Set in Venice, Italy, The Haunted...
Crome Yellow is Aldous Huxley’s very first novel, published by Chatto & Windus in 1921. The book is partly autobiographic. Its central character is inspired from the author himself, while its events sum, to a certain extent, his own...
Patrick Ness's 2011 fantasy novel A Monster Calls is about a thirteen-year-old boy who learns to overcome his denial about his mother's terminal cancer. Haunted by a nightmare in which his dying mother slips from his grasp as she falls off a...
Fifteen Dogs is the second novel in André Alexis' planned five-book series, The Quincunx Cycle—each work of which is centered around the philosophical themes of faith, love, place, power, and hatred. Specifically, Fifteen Dogs tells the story of a...
Along with the world famous Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote had given life to many other novels and short novels. A Tree of Night and other stories is Capote’s most famous collection of short stories published in 1949. The collection is...
We the Animals is author Justin Torres' debut novel. Released in 2011, the novel tells the story of three brothers of mixed race as they live their rough lives rural upstate New York throughout the 1980s. Although it primarily focuses on one of...
"To Build a Fire" is a prime example of the literary movement of naturalism. Naturalism was an offshoot of Charles Darwin's and Herbert Spencer's theories on evolution. In his monumental 1859 work Origin of the Species, Darwin theorized that...
Mary Shelley is no doubt best known for her novel called Frankenstein. However, she wrote countless novels and long-form stories. Among those short stories is "Mathilda," which tells the provocative story of a father's incestuous love for her...
Published in 2010, Sharon M. Draper’s novel Out of My Mind stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for two years. Written from the perspective of Melody Brooks, an eleven-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, Out of My Mind gives a window onto...
Franz Kafka's 1925 novel The Trial is about Josef K., a banker who is prosecuted by a court he has never heard of for a crime that is never revealed. Although K. attempts to fight the illogical accusation, the perplexing legal system steadily...
Russian author Leo Tolstoy's 1872 short story "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" is about a young merchant who is sent to a Siberian prison camp for a murder he didn't commit. After putting his faith in God, the merchant spends twenty-six years in...
The Four Feathers is the sixth novel of English author A.E.W. Mason and arguably his most successful composition. This masterpiece was published in 1902 by Macmillan as a historical fiction, thriller, and adventure book. The fact that its author...
New Grub Street is a realistic novel written by English novelist George Gissing, and published in three volumes by Smith, Elder & Co in 1891. The book is a semi-autobiographic work inspired by the authors’ own experiences in London’s literary...
Bao Ninh is a Vietnamese writer born on October 18, 1952, in Hanoi. He served as a soldier in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade during the Vietnam War, and he came back home as one of only ten survivors in his unit of five hundred. The war had an...
In 2008, on the 23rd of May, at the 61st Cannes Film Festival, the film Synecdoche, New York was released for the first time. Directed by Charlie Kaufman, which was his debut film, the film Synecdoche, New York tells an unusual story about a...
The Boat is a collection of short stories heavily influenced by the author’s background and childhood experiences. Born in Vietnam, Nam Le fled to Australia with his parents while still a baby. The family was one of the many families of “boat...
A Little Life was written by Hanya Yanagihara and was published in March 2015 by Doubleday. A Little Life is Yanagihara's second novel, and due to the difficult subject matter, neither the author nor editor predicted that the novel would be...
The Color of Magic, the first of Sir Terry Pratchett's extensive comedic fantasy series Discworld, marked a humble beginning for what would become a massively successful endeavor. Set in the fictional realm of the Discworld, a flat circle carried...
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is the last short story Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote before his death in 1881. Published in 1877 in A Writers' Diary, this story departs from the author's traditionally harsh realism, instead presenting...
“The Fly” was published in the The Nation and Athenaeum in 1922. At the time, Mansfield was grieving over the loss of her brother, who died in a military training accident shortly before he was to be deployed to France at the start of World War I....