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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16 summaries
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | Hamlet's Mill
Two historians of science argue that the world's myths are a coded record of ancient astronomy, built around a cosmic mill whose breaking marks the slow wobble of the heavens.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | 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.
Book Summary | We Were Liars
A wealthy family, a private island, four inseparable teenagers, and one summer the narrator cannot remember, however hard she tries.
Book Summary | 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.