“The Purloined Letter,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, was first published in the literary magazine The Gift in 1844. It is the third of his detective stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin, with the first two being “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842).This study guide refers to the version collected in The Purloined Poe, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988.Poe opens with an epigraph... Read The Purloined Letter Summary

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“The Ransom of Red Chief,” first published in The Saturday Evening Post on July 6, 1907, is a comedic short story by American author O. Henry. Born William Sydney Porter, O. Henry was a prolific short story writer who penned nearly 600 stories in his lifetime. His works depict realistic characters and events, and his stories are classified within the genre of Realism. Like his most famous short story, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905)... Read The Ransom of Red Chief Summary

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1) by Maggie Stiefvater is a young adult fantasy novel about a girl from a family of clairvoyants, the boys she befriends, and how their lives are intertwined along their journey to wake a slumbering king. The book was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and the Locus Award for science fiction and fantasy in 2013, and the Raven Cycle series was nominated for the Mythopoeic Awards in 2017... Read The Raven Boys Summary

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The Recruit by British author Robert Muchamore (Hodder Children’s Books, 2004) is the first book in the middle-grade spy adventure CHERUB series and follows a 12-year-old boy who is plucked from a difficult life to become a spy. The book offers a look at the opportunities presented by change while exploring themes of overcoming fear, seeing issues from both sides, and making difficult choices. The Recruit was nominated for eight awards and won seven of... Read The Recruit Summary

The Red and the Black (in French, Le Rouge et le Noir: Chronique du XIX siècle) is an 1830 historical novel by Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by the pen name Stendhal. The Red and the Black follows the rise and fall of Julien Sorel, a bright and ambitious, but in many ways naïve, young man of lowly birth, who resolves to work his way up in the highly stratified French society during the Bourbon Restoration... Read The Red and the Black Summary

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books for Children, 2010) is the first installment in the middle-grade fantasy adventure Kane Chronicles series and is followed by The Throne of Fire (2011) and The Serpent’s Shadow (2012). The book follows siblings Carter and Sadie Kane on a journey across North America to stop the Egyptian god of chaos from destroying the world. The Red Pyramid won a School Library Journal Best Book Award and was... Read The Red Pyramid Summary

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The Reptile Room is a middle-grade novel published by Daniel Handler under the pen name of Lemony Snicket in 1999. It is the second in the 13-book series A Series of Unfortunate Events, which chronicles the lives of the Baudelaire children (Violet, Klaus, and baby Sunny) after the untimely death of their parents. In the first book, a well-intentioned but oblivious man named Mr. Poe places the children under the care of their distant relative... Read The Reptile Room Summary

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) is a 1941 play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Ostensibly telling the story of a gangster, Arturo Ui, as he seizes control of the vegetable trade in Chicago and neighboring Cicero, Illinois, Brecht’s play is a satirical allegory of the Nazis’ rise to power. Each of the play’s characters and events has a parallel in the history of Nazi Germany and Brecht’s... Read The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Summary

The Return of the King is a 1955 book by J. R. R. Tolkien and the final volume of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This book concludes the epic fantasy journey of Frodo Baggins to destroy the One Ring and portrays the final battle between Mordor and Gondor. In this work, Tolkien explores how good can overcome a seemingly more powerful force of evil. The end of the book has drawn critical attention due... Read The Return of the King Summary

Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) is one of the 18th-century’s most influential political treatises. It offers a spirited defense of the ongoing French Revolution and calls for dramatic reforms in Britain. Paine wrote Rights of Man as a direct response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a conservative critique that professes skepticism and even horror at the course of events in France since the Revolution began in 1789. Rights of... Read The Rights of Man Summary

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The Roar by British novelist Emma Clayton was published in 2008. It is a middle-grade, post-apocalyptic science fiction novel set in the British Isles. Clayton’s world is rife with lies and conspiracies, with mutant children and authoritarianism, but at its core, it’s a story of the bond between siblings and the lengths to which they will go to remain together. The Roar is the first of a two-book series, the second of which, The Whisper... Read The Roar Summary

D. H. Lawrence published “The Rocking Horse Winner” in 1926, just four years before his death in 1930. He had written a story, “Glad Ghosts,” for inclusion in Lady Cynthia Asquith’s supernatural fiction anthology Ghost Book. She did not like the story, partly because of the celebration of male sexuality and other erotic undertones. Lawrence wrote “The Rocking Horse Winner” for her instead. Lawrence sets the story in a haunted house, appropriate for a “ghost”... Read The Rocking Horse Winner Summary