Showing titles in Coming of Age

A young teenager without parents or siblings, Lily Upshire takes the world on her own terms. When she finds something wrong with her favorite drink, she just wants the big company that made it to say sorry to her. But the adults in her life have other ideas, seeing everything in terms of money. As the company makes ever more extravagant overtures to avoid apologizing to her, she remains unmoved. She’s more concerned with what makes her life miserable: the school bullies, most of her teachers, and the scammers and catfish online. To gain self-confidence, she begins boxing lessons.

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye.

26-year-old Akash Amin has everything he ever wanted, but as he tries to kickstart his songwriting career and commit to his boyfriend, he is haunted by the painful memories of the first boy he ever loved. When his mother tells him she is selling the family home, Akash returns to Illinois, hoping to finally move on. Renu Amin always seemed perfect: doting husband, beautiful house, healthy sons. But as the one-year anniversary of her husband's death approaches, Renu can't stop wondering if she chose the wrong life thirty-five years ago.

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, best-selling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever.

"Lieber Gott und Jesus, Verzeihung! Bitte macht, dass ich nicht so bin, und bitte macht, dass das vorbeigeht." Aus den Befürchtungen wird für den 13-jährigen Yngve schnell eine Sehnsucht nach mehr, nachdem er mit Magnus auf der Turnmatte lag. Es beginnt eine Liebe, die vollkommen zu sein scheint. Vor anderen verborgen treffen sich die beiden heimlich in einem romantischen Waldstück und die Beziehung und Gefühle zueinander wachsen stetig ("Er... kam wie ein Geysir mit Lärm und Getöse").

A never-ending journey awaits you along a Mobius strip that runs the circulatory system from flushed head to rapid heart, along asphalt lanes stinking of gasoline fumes and vulcanized rubber. Join Fields's feral boys, captivating Peter Pans in flight from detestable home life, school life, everyday life. Along the way, you'll pick up passengers, hitchhikers runaways plotting wicked larks, stay-at-homes longing for a nudge, grownups ready to be bent to a boy's whims.

It is summer 1956 when 15-year-old Bridget first meets Isabella. In their conservative Connecticut town, Isabella is a breath of fresh air. She is worldly, alluring and brazen: an enigma. When they receive an offer to study at the Academy in Italy, Bridget is thrilled. This is her ticket to Europe and - better still - a chance to spend nine whole months with her glamorous and unpredictable best friend. There, lodged in a convent of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, the two girls move towards a passionate but fragile intimacy.

Vulgarian Rhapsody immerses listeners in a fading bohemia of queer dive bars, drag clubs, and countercultural cafes. The book's narrator (a longtime frenemy of Harris who's every bit as snarky and annoying as he is) tells the story with sadistic relish and an ironist's eye for the absurd. Anyone feeling sickly from too many uplifting stories of personal empowerment, precious coming-of-age tales, or sugarcoated romances will find the perfect antidote in this hilariously acidic comedy of manners.

Rainbow Reader Black: "Secrets" Fiction is a lie, but there is truth behind every lie. Georgie’s 30 year journey spans the entire Rainbow Reader series and can be read in any order. However, for readers interested in following the timeline in complete continuity, the proper reading order for the series begins with the unpublished, “Pink: The Secret Manuscript,” and continues directly into “Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple.” The timeline continues quite chronologically into the three “Moments in Time” novels. Following the three “Moments in Time” novels, the ...

Rainbow Reader Brown: Reconnect Fiction is a lie, but there is truth behind every lie. Georgie’s 30 year journey spans the entire Rainbow Reader series and can be read in any order. However, for readers interested in following the timeline in complete continuity, the proper reading order for the series begins with the unpublished, “Pink: The Secret Manuscript,” and continues directly into “Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple.” The timeline continues quite chronologically into the three “Moments in Time” novels. Following the three “Moments in Time” novels, the ...

Rainbow Reader Silver and Gold: “True Love’s Kiss” Fiction is a lie, but there is truth behind every lie. Georgie’s 30 year journey spans the entire Rainbow Reader series and can be read in any order. However, for readers interested in following the timeline in complete continuity, the proper reading order for the series begins with the unpublished, “Pink: The Secret Manuscript,” and continues directly into “Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple.” The timeline continues quite chronologically into the three “Moments in Time” novels. Following the three “Moments in...

Moments In Time Detours: Sometimes the wrong way can be the right way The magic is in this moment, let your dreams and goals drive you, but do not let them define you. The journey is where the fun is, so give yourself plenty of time to be present in this moment. Because this moment is all we will ever have. Forget the past, you can’t change it. But it can guide you when making decisions. And stop worrying about the future. The future has its way of working out. Not necessarily the way you want it to work out, but it does work itself out the way it should. What counts in life is not the ...

Nerdy and shy, scholarship student Daniel de La Luna arrives at college nervous to meet his golden-haired, athletic roommate, whose Facebook photos depict a boy just like those who made Daniel's school years hell. Sam Morris is not what he had imagined, though. As the two settle into college life they drink tequila under the stars, go on long runs through snow-covered hills, explore freshman nightlife, and inch closer until they find themselves in love.

Roland Keener is an aging hairstylist who’s lived and worked in Winnipeg all his life. He’s more or less content with the quiet and predictable days he shares with his partner of twenty-five years, Tony. That is, until he hears that Birdy O’Day—washed-up music icon and Roland’s childhood best friend and first love—is playing his first concert in Winnipeg since fleeing decades earlier. Holing up with a scrapbook of news clippings about Birdy, Roland recalls his childhood in the ’60s and his friendship with Birdy until the pair became estranged when Birdy left in pursuit of stardom.

It's summer, 1984, in blue-collar Swaffham, Massachusetts. Mel is thirteen, drinking a Slush Puppie at the drugstore, when she hears a voice, ‘deep and movie-star dramatic, like Lauren Bacall': Sylvia. What follows is a story of transgender awakening. Sylvia's shameless swagger and tough-girl trans femininity is an affront to the Swaffham locals, and her presence triggers hatred and, ultimately, violence. But it is also a catalyst for Mel. Through her friendship with Sylvia, Mel comes to realize that not only is there a world beyond Swaffham, there are other ways of being.

Elsa is struggling. Her formative, exhilarating relationship – with an older couple – has abruptly ended, leaving her depressed and directionless in her childhood bedroom. In the relationship’s wake, Elsa scrolls aimlessly through the internet in search of meaning. Faithfully, her screen provides a new obsession: a charismatic young actor whose latest feature is a gay love story that illuminates Elsa’s crisis. And then, as if she had conjured him, the actor arrives in her hometown, with an entourage of fellow actors, writers, and directors, for the annual theatre festival.

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know. She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows—almost—about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape. Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.

Mohanaswamy has just lost his long-time partner, Karthik, to a woman. Even as he scrutinizes himself, the choices he's made, the friends and lovers he's gained and lost, Mohanaswamy dreams of living a simple, dignified life. A life that would allow him to leave, even forget, the humiliation and fears of adolescence, the slurs his mind still carries around–gandu sule, hennu huli–and the despair that made him crave to conform.

When Yashica suddenly realised she had feelings for one of her closest friends and blurts them out to her, she was totally unprepared for the storm of hate her classmates unleashed upon her and the backlash from her Asian family. Gradually she realises who her real friends are and rebuilds her relationship with her family and tries to find a way to make peace with herself and her sexuality. Yashica throws herself into her love of cricket and finally is allowed to gain some success and acceptance. Perhaps one day she could even like herself enough to believe that someone else might like her ...

Bijoux wird nach Unruhen in Kinshasa als Teenager zu ihrer Tante Mira nach London geschickt. Hier verliebt sie sich zum ersten Mal – in eine Frau. Vor ihrer religiösen Tante muss sie das verbergen, doch sie ahnt nicht, dass auch diese ein Geheimnis vor ihr hat: den wahren Grund dafür, dass sie vor vielen Jahren von Afrika nach Europa kam, in ein Land, in dem sie sich immer noch nicht zu Hause fühlt. Bijoux weiß: So wie Tante Mira will sie nicht enden. Und trifft eine Entscheidung.