The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a non-fiction book that tells the story of Lacks and her HeLa cells, or the immortal cell line that doctors retrieved from her cervical cancer cells. Crown Publishing Group published the book in 2010, and it won a National Academies Communication Award the following year. This guide refers to the Crown 2010 first edition. Henrietta Lacks was a black American woman who died of cancer... Read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Summary

Zora Neale Hurston, a writer and anthropologist associated with the Harlem Renaissance, published her second and most famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937. Set in Central and South Florida, the novel follows protagonist Janie Crawford’s evolution from impressionable, idealistic girl to self-confident woman.Famed for her work as an ethnographer and an author, Hurston chronicled contemporary issues in the Black community with honesty. While somewhat unrecognized in her time, Hurston’s writing came to... Read Their Eyes Were Watching God Summary

The Language of Flowers (2011) is the debut novel of Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This fictional story follows Victoria Jones, a foster care child who is legally emancipated at the age of 18 and communicates primarily through the language of flowers. Diffenbaugh was inspired by the informational text Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway, which outlined the use of secret messages delivered via bouquet during the Victorian Era. Diffenbaugh studied creative writing and education at Stanford University... Read The Language of Flowers Summary

Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1930) is a detective novel that was first serialized in the magazine Black Mask. As Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon includes the introduction of Sam Spade as the protagonist, a departure from the nameless Continental Op who narrated his previous stories. Spade’s hard exterior, cool detachment, and reliance on his own moral code would become staples of the hardboiled genre, and The Maltese Falcon has since been named one... Read The Maltese Falcon Summary

Andy Weir’s debut novel, The Martian, was originally published in 2011 as serialized blog posts; after its 2014 book publication, it was a New York Times bestseller. A software engineer and son of a physicist and an electrical engineer, Weir identifies himself in the book jacket biography as a “lifelong space nerd,” and the novel is notable for staying strictly within the bounds of existing scientific understanding. Set just over two decades beyond the novel’s... Read The Martian Summary

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Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business investigates the science behind habit formation in the human brain. Drawing on corporate case studies and pioneering scientific experiments, Duhigg analyzes how individuals, organizations, and societies can use the knowledge of habit formation to change their behaviors. Published in 2012 by Random House, the nonfiction book has reached a broad public readership and landed on the New York Times... Read The Power of Habit Summary

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The Round House is a harrowing work of fiction evolving around the rape and near murder of Geraldine Coutts, a Native American woman on a North Dakota reservation. The events are told by Joe, Geraldine’s thirteen-year-old son. In the narrative, Joe and his father, Bazil, must piece together a series of flimsy clues to try to make sense of Geraldine’s attack. The story is fast-paced, and the riveting chapters are interspersed with the daily lives... Read The Round House Summary

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Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl is actually two separate (though interrelated) narratives: a short story set during the Holocaust, and a novella set roughly 40 years later in Miami, Florida. In the short story, also titled “The Shawl,” a young Jewish woman named Rosa Lublin is sent with her niece Stella and her infant daughter Magda to a concentration camp. Against all odds, Magda survives much longer than her mother expects, thanks largely to the shawl... Read The Shawl Summary

The Thief and the Dogs is a 1961 surrealist, existentialist novel by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. Mahfouz won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature and The Thief and the Dogs is considered one of his most celebrated works. The novel has been adapted for Egyptian television, and is the first novel written in Arabic to use the stream-of-consciousness style. Published nearly ten years after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the novel is also considered an... Read The Thief and the Dogs Summary

Published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of interrelated short stories about the Vietnam War written by American author Tim O’Brien. The historical fiction collection is considered essential literature about the Vietnam War and is often used to teach fiction writing techniques. An authorial persona, Tim O’Brien, narrates the stories in the first-person about his experiences during the war. The collection explores themes of Survivor’s Guilt, Talking as a Way of Processing... Read The Things They Carried Summary

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The Yellow House is a nonfiction memoir published in 2019 by the American author Sarah M. Broom. In a narrative centered around her childhood home, “The Yellow House,” Broom chronicles the history of New Orleans through three generations of her family. The Yellow House won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for best debut book.Plot SummaryIn 1961, Broom's mother, Ivory Mae, becomes a widow at the... Read The Yellow House Summary

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel written by Harper Lee and originally published in 1960. The book is widely regarded as an American classic and, until recently, was the only novel Lee had published. To Kill a Mockingbird was inspired by events and observations that took place in Lee’s hometown. Set in the Great Depression, from 1932 to 1935, the novel is narrated by a young girl named Scout, whose coming-of-age experiences closely mirror... Read To Kill a Mockingbird Summary

To Live, a 1993 realist novel by renowned Chinese author Yu Hua, traces the struggles of protagonist Fugui and his family. Instead of using traditional chapters, the novel is broken into italicized and non-italicized sections based on whether Fugui or his unnamed interlocutor is narrating. Spanning over four decades of modern Chinese history, including the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists (1945-49), the founding of the People’s Republic... Read To Live Summary

True Grit is a 1968 western novel by Charles Portis that tells the story of Mattie Ross, a determined and headstrong 14-year-old girl from Arkansas who seeks vengeance for her father’s murder. With the unlikely help of Rooster Cogburn, a tough US Marshal, and LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger, Mattie sets out to capture the killer, Tom Chaney. True Grit was an instant bestseller, adapted as a film in 1969 and in 2010. This guide uses the... Read True Grit Summary

Washington Square is a novel by American author Henry James published in 1880. It is a novel of manners, which turns on individual choices amidst social constraints and expectations, a style typical of James. The novel focuses on the romance between Catherine Sloper, a wealthy young woman in line to inherit even more from her father, and Morris Townsend, a handsome, charming suitor who lacks money and a profession. Catherine’s relationship with her father, Dr... Read Washington Square Summary

We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves is Karen Joy Fowler’s seventh novel. The book was first published in 2013. The following year, it won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Fowler said that the book takes inspiration from a real 1930s experiment. In an interview with Carmen Maria Machado published in The American Reader, Fowler states that she believes that using animals for research purposes is wrong, and... Read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Summary