Books
The big ideas from popular books, without giving the whole thing away. Get the GIST, then decide if you want the REST.
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18 summaries
A Monster Calls
A thirteen-year-old whose mother is gravely ill is visited at 12:07 by a monster made from a yew tree, who trades three stories for the one truth the boy cannot say.
Allegedly
Convicted as a small child of killing a baby, sixteen-year-old Mary finally has a reason to tell what really happened that night.
Broken Throne
Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.
Butcher & Blackbird
Two rival serial killers who prey only on other serial killers start an annual hunting contest, and somewhere between the crime scenes they fall in love.
It Ends With Us
A young Boston florist falls for a brilliant surgeon, then finds herself inside the pattern she grew up watching, just as her first love walks back into her life.
Lying
Sam Harris argues that even kind white lies cost more than they save, and that simply telling the truth makes life simpler and relationships deeper.
My Big TOE
A NASA physicist's theory of everything: consciousness is the foundation of reality, the physical world is a virtual training ground, and the point of it all is to grow from fear toward love.
One of Us Is Lying
Five students walk into detention and only four come out alive, each with a secret the dead boy was about to publish, in Karen M. McManus's fast, addictive teen mystery.
Red Queen
In a kingdom split by blood, a poor Red thief discovers she has a power only the ruling Silvers should have, and is hidden at the heart of their court.
Sunrise on the Reaping
Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is forced into the fiftieth Hunger Games and decides to fight the arena itself, in Suzanne Collins's prequel about propaganda and the cost of defiance.
The Descent of Man
Darwin finally turns his theory on ourselves, arguing that humans share ancestry, mind and even morality with other animals, and that mate choice helped shape us.
The Hidden Life of Trees
German forester Peter Wohlleben argues that a forest is a cooperative community in which trees communicate, share food and raise their young, and that we should manage it that way.
The Summer of Broken Rules
A grieving teenager returns to Martha's Vineyard for a family wedding, a week-long water-gun game of Assassin, and a groomsman she did not plan on.
The Telomere Effect
Victoria Aveyard's farewell to the Red Queen world: five novellas and a scholar's records that trace a kingdom from its apocalyptic birth to the hard, hopeful work of peace.
The Tyranny of Merit
Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that our faith in meritocracy has made winners arrogant, made everyone else feel humiliated, and fuelled the populist backlash, and that humility and respect for work are the way back.
Thirteen Reasons Why
A high school boy spends one night listening to cassette tapes left by a classmate who took her own life, each side naming a person who played a part.
We Were Liars
A wealthy family, a private island, four inseparable teenagers, and one summer the narrator cannot remember, however hard she tries.
What Is Life?
A quantum physicist asks how atoms can add up to a living thing, and his answers, an aperiodic crystal carrying a code-script and life feeding on negative entropy, help launch molecular biology.