Religion & Spirituality
In this collection we've gathered fiction and nonfiction texts that address humanity's age-old search for meaning and purpose within a higher power.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) is Jordan B. Peterson’s second book. Peterson’s self-help book seeks to provide practical and virtuous rules to live by for a wide audience and general readership. The book streamlines, simplifies, and reimagines some of the more traditionally academic topics of Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Each non-fiction work aims to explain human history and human nature according to universal frameworks. 12... Read 12 Rules for Life Summary
Miriam Toews’s A Complicated Kindness (2004) is about Nomi Nickel, an adolescent living in the religious Mennonite town of East Village whose coming of age takes place against the backdrop of her family’s unraveling. Toews, who grew up in the Mennonite community of Steinbach, Manitoba, is the author of several novels set in Mennonite communities, many of which are critical of aspects of the faith. This novel, Toews’s third, has garnered considerable acclaim and many... Read A Complicated Kindness Summary
Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation is a book by Eboo Patel. Part memoir, part treatise on the vulnerability of youth who are preyed upon and radicalized by religious zealots, the book examines Patel’s search for his identity, following him from childhood to his time as the founder of the Interfaith Youth Core group. Themes of faith, family, religious doubt, pluralism, and the... Read Acts Of Faith Summary
A Discovery of Witches is a romantic fantasy by American historian, professor, and author Deborah Harkness. Rocketing to popularity when first published in 2011, the novel received a starred review from Library Journal and became a New York Times Best Seller. The story follows Dr. Diana Bishop, a spellbound witch and scholar of 17th-century chemistry, whose life changes when she calls a long-lost, enchanted manuscript from the Bodleian Library. The handsome vampire Matthew Clairmont and... Read A Discovery of Witches Summary
An influential work of moral philosophy, After Virtue (1981) by the Scottish-born philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre takes a bleak view of the state of modern moral dialogue, viewing it as suffering from a lack of rational thought and an inability to resolve disagreements. By looking at older forms of moral discourse, such as Aristotle’s moral framework, and comparing them to the modern version, he generally finds the modern moral framework to be lacking and suggests fixes... Read After Virtue Summary
A Game of Thrones is a 1996 epic fantasy novel by George R. R. Martin and is the first in his long-running A Song of Ice and Fire series. The novel introduces the audience to the fictional world of Westeros, where characters become embroiled in a complicated web of plots, conspiracies, and betrayals as they pursue power. A Game of Thrones won numerous awards on publication and was adapted for television in 2011. This guide... Read A Game of Thrones Summary
Clive Staples Lewis (1888-1963), known as C.S. Lewis, was a British writer and academic renowned for his works on Christianity and best remembered today as the author of the children’s book series The Chronicles of Narnia, which famously includes the novels The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and Prince Caspian (1951), among others. He graduated from Oxford University and taught there until 1954 when he became Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at... Read A Grief Observed Summary
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay (2015) is a horror novel published by William Morrow. It is the fifth of Tremblay’s 10 novels, and was optioned in 2016 by Focus Features for screen adaptation. His seventh novel, The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), winner of the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards, was also adapted for the screen; it was released in 2023 as the M. Night Shyamalan film Knock at... Read A Head Full of Ghosts Summary
Wiley Cash’s novel A Land More Kind Than Home (2012) is set in rural tobacco country in North Carolina. It focuses on the events that unfold over just a few days involving a charismatic church and its leader, Pastor Carson Chambliss. The story is told in alternating points of view from the perspectives of three characters, each of whom witnesses the events that unfold from a different angle. The story speaks to themes of The... Read A Land More Kind than Home Summary
Alif the Unseen is the debut novel of G. Willow Wilson, an American-born writer of comics and prose who lived in Egypt for a time and converted to Islam in 2003. Published in 2012, the book won the 2013 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was nominated for the 2013 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Blending fantasy, dystopian, and cyberpunk themes, it follows a young man’s journey through the seen world of humans... Read Alif the Unseen Summary
All The Lovely Bad Ones is a 2008 middle-grade fiction book written by Mary Downing Hahn, a prolific children’s author who has authored several award-winning novels. The book’s title is taken from the poem “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley, which the author inscribed to all children—including “all the lovely bad ones.” All The Lovely Bad Ones won an Oklahoma Sequoyah Award for Children and the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award.All The Lovely... Read All The Lovely Bad Ones Summary
A Man for All Seasons is a 1960 play by English playwright Robert Bolt. Though it was published in its completed form in 1960, it was originally written for radio in 1954. It was then adapted for television in 1957 before finally being rewritten for the stage. The original runs of the show in London and later New York attained critical and commercial success. In 1966, the play was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film... Read A Man For All Seasons Summary
A Map of Home is a 2008 coming-of-age novel by Randa Jarrar. The novel follows the life of Nidali, a girl of Palestinian, Greek, and Egyptian descent who grows up between Kuwait, Egypt, and the United States. The novel contains three parts, each of which correspond to Nidali’s time in these three different countries. During her childhood, Nidali navigates extreme circumstances, grappling with violence, family conflict, and the backdrop of war, all while exploring her... Read A Map of Home Summary
Ambiguous Adventure is a 1961 novel by author Cheikh Hamidou Kane. The plot of this novel mirrors much of Kane’s life, including his birth in Senegal and studies in Paris. The version used for this guide is the 2012 edition from Melville House Publishing.Ambiguous Adventure discusses the duality of man within the context of colonial and postcolonial societies. The novel splits the colonized and the colonizer into two distinct and opposing cultures: The former (the... Read Ambiguous Adventure Summary
In 2012, Ayad Akhtar wrote the novel American Dervish, a coming-of-age story about a Pakistani-American boy in 1980s Milwaukee. Akhtar, a Pakistani-American writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, explores love of God and love of others through the prisms of religion, family, and romantic love in this novel. This guide refers to the hardcover first edition. Plot SummaryThe Prologue introduces narrator Hayat Shah, a college student whose mother’s best friend Mina has just died of cancer. The... Read American Dervish Summary
Eleven-year-old Pakistani-American Amina Khokar lives in Milwaukee with her mother, father, and brother, Mustafa. At school, a Korean girl named Soojin Kim is her best friend. Amina is distressed when Soojin befriends Emily, a girl who has historically joined in on racially-motivated taunts against Soojin and Amina. The situation is complicated when Amina, Emily, and Soojin—along with the class oddball, Bradley—are assigned to the same group for an Oregon Trail project in their social studies... Read Amina's Voice Summary
“A Modell of Christian Charity” is a sermon written by John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer who served as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English colonial settlement around present-day Boston, and the second settlement in New England. A sermon is a speech on a religious subject, usually used for those delivered by clergy in Christian church services. The sermon’s epigraph (a short, introductory quotation or informational text) tells us Winthrop wrote on... Read A Model of Christian Charity Summary
A Monster Calls (2011) was written by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, and the original idea for the novel is credited to the late Siobhan Dowd. Ness wrote the novel in Dowd’s memory after she passed away in 2007 from breast cancer. Set in present-day England, A Monster Calls is a young adult fantasy novel that explores topics of terminal illness, grief, death, anger, and the grieving process through the eyes of a child;... Read A Monster Calls Summary
And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students is a 2000 nonfiction work by Miles Corwin, the Los Angeles Times reporter best known for The Killing Season. In this book, Corwin chronicles a school year spent with 12 senior students in the gifted program in a South-Central Los Angeles high school. The students face many difficulties and must display perseverance to remain in this magnet program. Corwin was... Read And Still We Rise Summary
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke is a study of how humans think, learn, and retain knowledge. Scholars often focus first on Locke’s philosophical treatises, but his work on epistemology complements and shapes his political thought. Born in 1632, the English philosopher ushered in the Age of Enlightenment and is considered one of the greatest Western philosophers in history. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, explores the origin and nature... Read An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Summary
A New Earth: Create a Better Life by Eckart Tolle was originally published in 2005 with the title A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. The book followed in the wake of Tolle’s seminal 1997 work The Power of Now, which discusses the potential inherent in the present moment and suggests that the destructive voice in our heads, which causes us to be constantly dissatisfied and compare ourselves to others, is the ego and... Read A New Earth Summary
April Morning is a historical fiction work by Howard Fast, a prolific author whose writings spanned the bulk of the 20th century. Published in 1961, midway through Fast’s career, the novel is one of many he wrote on the Revolutionary War and the birth of America. Originally intended for a general audience, it came to be regarded as a young adult novel as many middle and high school English programs included it in their curriculum... Read April Morning Summary
A River Sutra, a novel by Indian American author Gita Mehta, was first published in 1993. The novel is set on the banks of the Narmada River in India, and it is comprised of interconnected stories about characters who are drawn to the river. The narrator seeks to retreat from the world after his wife’s death, but he gains an appreciation for the lived experiences of humanity through the stories he hears. The novel discusses... Read A River Sutra Summary
Sheldon Vanauken’s celebrated memoir A Severe Mercy is a moving portrait of deep love confronted with suffering and death. Published in 1977, A Severe Mercy was written by Vanauken from the compilation of many years’ worth of journal entries, hand-written letters, and firsthand accounts of the people and events that the narrative relates. As a Yale- and Oxford-trained scholar and professor of English and an accomplished poet and author, Vanauken brings his literary expertise to... Read A Severe Mercy Summary
In A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837, historian Paul E. Johnson analyzes the social factors that led to Rochester’s religious revival in the 1830s. This guide follows the first edition of A Shopkeeper’s Millennium, which was first published in 1978. Rochester’s revival was part of a larger religious movement in 19th-century America, known as the Second Great Awakening, during which time numerous Americans joined evangelical Protestant churches. Rochester’s revival centered... Read A Shopkeeper's Millennium Summary
Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal) wrote A Tale of a Tub (published in 1704) not only to expound upon the hypocrisy of religion in early 18th century England, but to explore ideas about critics, oration, ancient and modern philosophies, digressions, and the nature of writing itself. These themes are all underscored with a satirical tone that takes religion, authors, and critics to task. The title refers to the tub that sailors used to... Read A Tale Of A Tub Summary
