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.
Joe Turner's Come and Gone is the second of ten plays that makes up The Pittsburgh Cycle. Penned by playwright August Wilson, it was first staged in 1984 in Waterford, Connecticut, admittedly a very long way off-Broadway, but it made its move to...
British author Lewis Carroll is no doubt best known for writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its subsequent sequel. However, he also wrote several other equally wonderful books and poems. Jabberwocky is one of those poems. Classified as a...
Written by American author Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (2013) tells the story of two people whose family ties have defined - and in some ways, entrapped - them. Subhash and his brother, for example, were inseparable for most of their lives. In...
Published in 1819, "Love's Philosophy" is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley, the spouse of the Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein, originally published this poem through Leigh Hunt, a popular poet and writer of the time. It was later...
Canadian author Alastair MacLeod was descended from Scottish immigrants who made their home on the rugged landscape of the Cape Breton Islands. a place that MacLeod clearly loves and uses as the backdrop for the majority of his writing.
The Lost...
Have you ever been a child lost in a department store, looking for your mother, panicking and wondering how you are ever going to get home again? This feeling of rising fear inside a child who does not know where they are but finds themselves...
Lone Survivor chronicles Marcus Luttrell's early life, as well as his time preparing for and during Navy SEAL training. Primarily, though, Lone Survivor tells the true story of Marcus Luttrell (and his fellow Navy SEALS) experiences during...
Written during 1861—the first year of what is considered one of her most creative periods—“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain…” is both one of Emily Dickinson’s more well-known poems, and reflective of the themes of death, pain, and psychic...
American author Celeste Ng's second novel is set in her own hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a place she dearly loves. It tells the story of two families in Shaker Heights whose lives intertwine because of their children. When the Richardson's...
Miranda Evans is a sixteen year old girl who lives in northeastern Pennsylvania. Her diary entries form the narrative of Susan Beth Pfeffer's 2006 science fiction novel that describes what happens when an asteroid hits the moon and brings it...
Written by English author Kate Atkinson, Life After Life (2013) tells two very different stories, each of which involve a woman named Ursula Todd. In one story, Ursula dies before she even takes her first breath. In another, she is born and...
William Dawes was an officer of the Royal Marines, and sailed with the First Fleet from England to Australia in 1788, landing in the province of New South Wales He was by profession an astronomer but he wanted to join the voyage in order to study...
Lisa Ko is an American writer, born in 1975 in New York City to Filipino immigrants of Chinese descent. Ko started writing in early childhood, drawing her first inspiration from observations she made at her family’s flea market and crafts show...
Although best known for his novels (the most famous of which include No Country for Old Men and The Road), Cormac McCarthy has written a number of plays and screenplays. Among the pantheon of McCarthy's work is his 2006 play The Sunset Limited,...
“The Lamb” initially appeared in Songs of Innocence, a collection which Blake first published as independent volume in 1789. He followed that collection up in 1794 with Songs of Experience. The two volumes are typically bound together today and...
Written by Susan Fraser King, Lady Macbeth (published in 2008) tells a story of a woman who is a grandchild to a king, a daughter to a prince and to a queen. She has fought in an arena two times and has a kid. Married to a powerful lord, she is...
Hope Jahren is a successful American professor, geobiologist, and geochemist. With these credentials, she penned her memoir Lab Girl, which focuses on the overlooked brilliance of plant life and nature. The book is divided into five parts: a...
My Name is Red is a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, one of the most popular writers in the homeland, who has received many national awards.
His first novel, which brought the author success outside of Turkey was the novel The White Castle. In...
Gerald Durrell was a man of many talents; zookeeper, television show host, conservationist and naturalist, founder of the Jersey Zoo in the British Channel Islands and author; it is in the latter role that he found the most success and for which...
Daphne du Maurier is a famous English writer, and was engaged in writing all her life. She was a skillful master of detective and historical novels, biographies - books about the lives of famous people, theater plays, as well as books about the...
Just before the final essential, insightful and revealing conversation between Mrs. Packletide and Louisa Mebbin which brings this story to an end, a character identified only as Clovis makes a suggestion to the title character that she throw a “...
Written by Brit Bennett, The Mothers (published in 2016) tells the story of a young girl named Nadia Turner who just lost her mom to suicide. After her mother's death, she goes to her local church to see a pastor and grieve. But then she finds out...
The novel is about an infamous Californian bandit called Joaquin Murieta and it tells the story of a fallen man, who was once guided by moral and goodness, taking a path of revenge, blood and pain. The story gives background to the anti-hero's...
Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (published in 2003) tells the true story of the Oakland Athletics and their player-turned General Manager, Billy Beane. Specifically, it tells the story of how Beane and his assistants...