Much Ado About Nothing, a comedy dating from the mid-career period of William Shakespeare was probably written just prior to 1600. The play has the trappings of a theatrical farce with its use of assumptions and misunderstandings. Main characters Benedick and Beatrice are duped into announcing their love for each other while Claudio is fooled into spurning Hero at the altar when he mistakenly believes that she has not been faithful to him. The theme of lovers being tricked... Read Much Ado About Nothing Summary

Published in 2023, Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide is the first of a forthcoming series by the Edgar Award winner Rupert Holmes. Written in the form of a self-help instruction manual by a fictional Harbinger Harrow, the dean of McMaster’s Conservatory for the Applied Arts, the book reveals secrets of the elite school where the sole curriculum consists of how to commit the perfect murder. The novel follows the education of three... Read Murder Your Employer Summary

My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2016) is a young adult horror novel by Grady Hendrix. Set in 1980s Charleston, South Carolina, the novel explores the lifelong friendship between high school students Abby Rivers and Gretchen Lang. When Gretchen becomes possessed by a demon after a night of drinking and drug use, the girls’ friendship is put to the test. This guide refers to the paperback edition published by Quirk Books in 2017.Content Warning: My Best Friend’s... Read My Best Friend's Exorcism Summary

My Fair Lady, a musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music), opened on Broadway to tremendous critical and popular success in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews as Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s popular play Pygmalion (1914) and inspired by the Greek myth of “Pygmalion and Galatea,” the musical takes place in early-20th-century London, satirizing issues of class hierarchies, gender disparity, and how language... Read My Fair Lady Summary

My Favorite Half-Night Stand (2018) is a contemporary romance novel by Christina Lauren, the pen name of bestselling writing team Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. Known for popular works like The Unhoneymooners and The Soulmate Equation, the duo has established a significant presence in the romance genre. The novel follows a group of close-knit academic friends who make a pact to find dates for a university gala using an online dating app. The situation becomes... Read My Favorite Half-Night Stand Summary

My Friends (2025), by Swedish author Fredrik Backman, tells the story of four teenagers who form a powerful bond that ends up changing a stranger’s life in the future. The narrative unfolds across two timelines, linking the present-day life of a young girl named Louisa with the teenage years of four friends whose fierce loyalty lays the groundwork for an enduring story about Art and Human Connection, The Value of Friendship, and The Relationship Between... Read My Friends Summary

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is a 2013 coming-of-age novel by Fredrik Bachman. The story follows Elsa, a seven-year-old girl with a penchant for grammar and deep affection for her grandmother, Granny, who dies from cancer. As Elsa discovers Granny’s past and the many lives she affected, she also learns more about Life and Death, Celebrating Differences, and the Complexity of Human Nature.Originally written in Swedish, My Grandmother Asked Me has... Read My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry Summary

My Lady Jane (2016) is a work of young adult fiction by Jodi Meadows, Cynthia Hand, and Brodi Ashton, who collectively call themselves the “Lady Janies.” The book offers a fantastical retelling of the life of Lady Jane Grey, a short-lived queen from the Tudor era. In the book’s version of Tudor England, the minority Ethians (people who can turn into animals) are persecuted by the majority Verities (people who can’t). Against these tensions, the... Read My Lady Jane Summary

My Life as a Book is a middle grade fiction and humor novel written by Janet Tashjian and originally published in 2010. The first of 11 books in the My Life series, the novel is illustrated by Tashjian’s son, Jake. Tashjian uses humor and the illustrations to make the novel more approachable to young, reluctant readers. My Life as a Book earned the 2011 Bank Street – Children’s Book of the Year award.This guide utilizes... Read My Life as a Book Summary

Originally published in 1963, “My Oedipus Complex” by Frank O’Connor is a short story set during the close of World War I with a young, unreliable narrator. The story explores themes of The Innocence of Children During Wartime, Maturity Through Compassion, and Possession Versus Love within a newly reunited family. Working quickly to set up the narrator’s rich inner conflict with his father that is at times at odds with the warm family life he... Read My Oedipus Complex Summary

Naked (1997) is a collection of personal essays written by David Sedaris. These essays chart Sedaris’s youth in more-or-less chronological order, starting with childhood and ending in adulthood. These essays largely describe formative events throughout the author’s life—such as near-death experiences and struggles with mental illness—but they also share more trivial anecdotes, like his memories of his grandmother’s eccentric behavior and his father’s propensity to lie. These loosely connected essays come together to complete a... Read Naked Summary

Network Effect (2020) by Martha Wells is the first full-length novel in her acclaimed Murderbot Diaries series, following several Hugo- and Nebula-winning novellas that introduced readers to its sardonic, part-machine protagonist. Wells, a veteran science fiction and fantasy author known for her deep character psychology and socially conscious world-building, uses this entry to expand the series’ scope from intimate novellas to the grander scale of a space opera that fuses action, philosophy, and emotional growth. Blending speculative fiction... Read Network Effect Summary

New Kid by Jerry Craft is a 2019 graphic novel and winner of the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jim Callahan is responsible for the coloring. Craft is the creator of the 1990 comic strip Mama’s Boyz, as well as Class Act, the 2020 companion story to this book. New Kid focuses on an artistic middle school student who makes friends and builds confidence in himself as he navigates race and class... Read New Kid Summary

Nimona is a young adult graphic novel created by N. D. Stevenson and published in 2015 by HarperCollins. It is based on Stevenson’s webcomic, also titled Nimona, which was published in 2012 and earned Slate magazine’s 2012 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Web Comic of the Year. The graphic novel adaptation also received critical acclaim, earning the 2016 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint and becoming a 2015 National Book Award Finalist.Nimona is a... Read Nimona Summary

No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman (Hyperion Books, 2002) is a humorous middle-grade fiction book about how one boy’s unwillingness to lie changes his life and the lives of everyone at his school. No More Dead Dogs won the 2002 Young Reader’s Choice Award (intermediate), one of many award-winners penned by Korman. Gordon Korman published his first book (This Can’t be Happening at Macdonald Hall, first in the Macdonald Hall series) when he was... Read No More Dead Dogs Summary

Patricia Lockwood published the novel No One Is Talking About This in 2021. Lockwood is a poet known for her short-form poetry posted on Twitter and her memoir Priestdaddy (2017). No One Is Talking About This, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, depicts an unnamed protagonist navigating a life devoted to maintaining an online presence through social media and blog posts. When her sister’s unborn child is diagnosed with Proteus syndrome, the protagonist puts... Read No One is Talking About This Summary

Nora Goes Off Script is Annabel Monaghan’s first novel for adults. First published in 2022, it is a story of love, heartbreak, and resilience. When the protagonist, Nora Hamilton, falls in love with the movie star playing her ex-husband in a movie she wrote, she feels like she has entered a world of pure fantasy. Their love story plays out just like one of the romance movies she usually writes, until he leaves to film... Read Nora Goes Off Script Summary

No Talking (2007) is a children’s novel by Andrew Clements, and the 2010 recipient of the California Young Reader Medal. In the novel, fifth-grade boys and girls compete to see who can talk the least at school. The competition causes an uproar among teachers and staff, exploring questions of authority in the school setting and building friendships across differences. Andrew Clements was a teacher, author, editor, and book publisher, best known for his debut novel, Frindle... Read No Talking Summary

American-born journalist Bill Bryson undertakes a journey across the island of Great Britain, which he has called home for the previous 20 years, in his travel memoir, Notes from a Small Island. Originally published in 1995, the book still provides fresh—if sometimes biting—comparisons between British quirks and American attitudes; insight into the nature of tourism; and recognition of the disappointments and difficulties of travel. Despite these difficulties, Bryson delights in the natural beauty of this... Read Notes From A Small Island Summary

The novel opens on Alex choosing to get drunk and drive to his father’s in order to get revenge. Alex’s parents are recently divorced after his father starts to date Alex’s third-grade teacher. After crashing his mother’s car into a garden gnome, a very drunk Alex is taken into the police station and then transferred to the hospital with a concussion and alcohol poisoning. Alex’s mother grounds him for a month, until a judge punishes... Read Notes From The Midnight Driver Summary