Plot Summary Library

Explore thousands of classic and contemporary titles in a quick-read format. SuperSummary Plot Summaries feature a full synopsis to guide you through key plot points. Browse titles alphabetically or by genre.

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All TitlesModern FictionClassic FictionNonfictionPlaysEssaysPoetryMiddle Grade/YA
Magna Carta Libertatum
Stephen Langton

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1215

Letter to My Son
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2015

Small Is Beautiful
Ernst F. Schumacher

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1973

Politics and the English Language
George Orwell

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1946

The Medusa and the Snail
Lewis Thomas

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1979

Stephen King
Rocky Wood

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2011

The Problem of Social Cost
R. H. Coase

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1960

The Opposite of Loneliness
Marina Keegan

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2004

Myths to Live By
Joseph Campbell

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1972

Moments of Being
Virginia Woolf

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1976

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Doris Lessing

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

Fight of the Century
Michael Chabon, ed., Ayelet Waldman, ed.

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2021

Southern Lady Code
Helen Ellis

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

Cooper Union Address
Abraham Lincoln

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1860

Small Fires: Essays
Julie Marie Wade

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2011

Something to Declare: Essays
Julia Alvarez

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1998

Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Salman Rushdie

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1981

Calypso
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2018

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Chuck Klosterman

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2003

The Art of the Commonplace
Wendell Berry

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

When You Are Engulfed in Flames
David Sedaris

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2008

The Rules Do Not Apply
Ariel Levy

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

The River of Consciousness
Oliver Sacks

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

Ground Zero
Andrew Holleran

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1977

Half Empty
David Rakoff

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2010

Alibis
André Aciman

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2011

A Family by Any Other Name
Bruce Gillespie

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2014

The Art of the Personal Essay
Phillip Lopate

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1994

How Reading Changed My Life
Anna Quindlen

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1998

A Summer Life
Gary Soto

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1990

For the Time Being
Annie Dillard

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1999

Notes from No Man's Land
Eula Biss

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2009

My Time Among the Whites
Jennine Capó Crucet

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

Little Weirds
Jenny Slate

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2019

Small Wonder
Barbara Kingsolver

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2002

Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees
Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2024

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance
Angela Y. Davis

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1971

What Are People For?
Wendell Berry

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1990

Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Thomas Sowell

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2005