Literary Companions, Book Reviews & Guides

Detective McNulty applies bite marks to a deceased man's body with a set of dentures in The Wire, illustrating how officialdom deals in falseho...

American Gothic literature inherited many time-worn tropes from its English Gothic precursor, along with a core preoccupation: anxiety about pow...

Memorable children's narratives immerse readers in imaginary worlds that bring them into the story. Some of these places have been constructed i...

Nelson Algren was a renowned Chicago writer known for his social commentary and his novels like The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild ...

After years of studying piano as a young woman in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson curated her music book, a common pract...

Charles Fort was an American researcher from the early twentieth century who cataloged reports of unexplained phenomena he found in newspapers and ...

J. R. R. Tolkien is arguably the most influential fantasy writer of all time--his world building and epic mythology have changed Western audienc...

Riddled with intertextual references and notorious for their explicit portrayal of sex, drugs, and the occasional rock 'n' roll, the novels of B...

Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the Queens of Crime. Alongside writers like Agatha Christie, she perfected the whodunnit, but also used the genre t...

New Zealand author Janet Frame (1924-2004) during her lifetime published 11 novels, three collections of short stories, a volume of poetry and a...

Surveying the life, work and accolades of Irish playwright Brian Friel, this literary companion investigates his personal and professional relat...

Every culture in the world has a version of the story of Cinderella. Surveying thousands of tellings of what is perhaps the most popular fairy t...

Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ life was dominated by the negative image of the closet--the metaphorical space where that which was deeme...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter,...

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare is the most comprehensive reference work available on Shakespeare's life, times, works, and his 400-year global...

'Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion' R. South 'If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignora...

'Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour.' Talleyrand 'He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.' Jonat...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter,...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter,...

Kierkegaard is often praised for his poetic writing style. Throughout his works, especially his pseudonymous ones, he often breaks from philosop...

'This book is loosely based on the lost journals that William Shakespeare never wrote, describing his life and times in chronological order and the...