Study Guides
Notes on the novels, plays and memoirs students meet between Years 7 and 12 - what happens, what it is about, and the quotes worth knowing. Free to read, no sign-up.
What is in each guide
Every guide follows the same seven headings, because that is roughly the order the questions arrive in: what happens, what it is about, who the people are, where and when it is set, how it is written, which lines are worth quoting, and what to make of the ending.
They are a starting point, not a substitute for the text. Read the book first. Then use the guide to check you have not missed a theme, or to find the thread of an argument when an essay will not start.
- Summary
- Key themes & motifs
- Main characters
- Setting & social context
- Writing style
- Important quotes
- Conclusion
Browse the guides
99 titles, listed A-Z
13 Reasons Why
Jay Asher
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
A Court of Thorns and Roses
Sarah J. Maas
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
A Million Little Pieces
James Frey
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
Around the World in 80 Days
Jules Verne
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Truman Capote
Bridge to Terabithia
Katherine Paterson
Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl
Daisy Jones & The Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Dead Poets Society
N.H. Kleinbaum
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Dylan Thomas
Don Quijote
Miguel de Cervantes
Dracula
Bram Stoker
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
Everything, Everything
Nicola Yoon
Fences
August Wilson
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
J.K. Rowling
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
Holes
Louis Sachar
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
James and the Giant Peach
Roald Dahl
Joan of Arc - A History
Helen Castor
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann
King John
William Shakespeare
Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
Leviathan
Scott Westerfeld
Life of Pi
Yann Martel
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott
Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
Mao's Last Dancer
Li Cunxin
Matilda
Roald Dahl
Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Golden
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie
My Sister's Keeper
Jodi Picoult
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey
One of Us Is Lying
Karen M. McManus
Percy Jackson & the Olympians
Rick Riordan
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Ready Player One
Ernest Cline
Robin Hood
Howard Pyle
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Schindler’s List
Thomas Keneally
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
Shadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
Silence of the Lambs
Thomas Harris
Talking to Strangers
Malcolm Gladwell
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Godfather
Mario Puzo
The Golden Compass
Philip Pullman
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo
The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold
The Martian
Andy Weir
The Maze Runner
James Dashner
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Ann Brashares
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Jenny Han
The War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells
The Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum
Tomorrow, When the War Began
John Marsden
Turtles All the Way Down
John Green
Studying a film instead? The film study guides work the same way.
Also on this site
Need more than a set of notes?
These guides are free and they stay free. They are still notes, though, and by Year 12 most students want something that goes further. Two things sit alongside them.
250+
free English guides on this site, from Year 7 set texts to every HSC module
Free - Years 7 to 12
The rest of the library
The guides above are the novels and plays. The films get the same treatment, the junior years have their own shelf, and the senior pages take the HSC modules one at a time. All of it free, and none of it behind an account.
Free - Years 11 & 12
Built module by module
The HSC never sets a text on its own; it sets it inside a module. Our senior English pages take the modules one at a time, with the prescribed texts under each, so a student can work out what the question is really asking before writing a word.
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