Showing titles in Coming of Age

When Margaret's fiancé, John, is hospitalized for depression in 1960s London, she faces a choice: carry on with their plans despite what she now knows of his condition, or back away from the suffering it may bring her. She decides to marry him. Imagine Me Gone is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody.

Two young women attending college decide to have a summer adventure canoeing the rapids-strewn Thelon River that runs 450 miles through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers she trained with at camp, and she wants to share that experience with her friend and lover, Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly, the risk-taker, falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff. She is left injured and comatose, and soon dies.

The 1960s brought Seth and Payton all they'd fantasized about—perfect friendships, a successful four-man band, and most importantly, each other. Together they embarked on a tour that brought them stimulating highs and shattering lows, and they prospered and suffered in one another's arms. The two men carried each other and carried a group that created both a history and a future for rock. But, at some point, their music blurred with the news of their love, and the world was faced with the choice to embrace its heroes or revert back to its deep-rooted prejudices.

Giacomo Brolo, aka Jack, is a mess. He works piecemeal construction gigs in remote WA, drinks himself to oblivion and is estranged from his family and friends. He's consumed by a self-loathing all too common for closeted men who have grown up in a world of hate and shame. But then Jack returns to his regional hometown of Geraldton for a family wedding. He hasn't been back since he fled at the age of eighteen, and his past soon catches up with him.

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.

Max Walker is a golden boy. Attractive, intelligent, and athletic, he's the perfect son. Max's mother, a highly successful criminal lawyer, is determined to maintain the facade of effortless excellence she has constructed through the years. Now that the boys are getting older, now that she won't have as much control, she worries that the facade might soon begin to crumble. Adding to the tension, her husband, Steve, has chosen this moment to stand for election to Parliament. The Walkers are hiding something, you see. Max is special. Max is different. Max is intersex.

Eighteen-year-old aspiring comic Joey Rossi just found out his boyfriend has been cheating on him for the past 10 months. But what did he expect? Joey was born with an addiction to toxic jerks - something he inherited from his lovably messy, wisecracking, Italian-American spitfire of a mom (and best friend): 34-year-old Gia Rossi. When Gia’s latest non-relationship goes up in flames only a day later, the pair’s New Jersey apartment can barely contain their rage. In a misguided attempt at revenge, Joey and Gia inadvertently commit a series of crimes and flee the state....

High near the volcano of northern Tenerife, an endless ceiling of cloud cover traps the working class in an abject, oppressive heat. Far away from the island’s posh resorts, two girls dream of hitching a ride down to the beach and escaping their horizonless town.

In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her "crybaby" younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself.

A sus quince años, Mungo, un adolescente con una sensibilidad diferente al resto de los chicos del vecindario, vive en un barrio obrero del Glasgow de la era post-Thatcher, en el seno de una familia protestante: sin padre, con una madre alcohólica y un hermano que representa todo lo que él odia. En un ambiente masculinizado, rodeado de paro y peleas callejeras, solo cuenta con el apoyo y el cuidado de su hermana, Jodie. Tras un altercado familiar, su madre decide enviar a Mungo de pesca con dos desconocidos de Alcohólicos Anónimos para que hagan de él un hombre de provecho.

In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and “the neighborhood homosexual,” Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son’s desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja’s work life and love life, boundaries be damned.

It’s 1953 when Memory Feather and her mother, Virginia, are welcomed back home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast community of Belle Cote by Virginia’s childhood friend Mac McFadden, whose verve and energy buoy the recently divorced Virginia to embrace this new chapter. Memory (“Mem”) is unlike other girls: she is attuned to the voices of plants and animals and is missing two fingers on her twisted left hand. The three of them knit their lives together and become a close, though unconventional, family.

Jade Moretti’s job at Lovely Diamonds, the most popular gentlemen’s club in Las Vegas, pays well. She’s not a stripper but an accountant who loves running numbers and watching revenues rise. Lovely Diamonds is a family business, run by her former stripper mother for over thirty years. At twenty-three, Jade is ready to embrace adulthood and live life on her own terms. As Jade catches the eye of a former popular classmate from high school from her past reenters her life. Her former best friend, international rock star Ivy Falls has returned, not only to shake up the town, but to ...

Kentucky was only ever going to be a summer job. Come fall, Blue Riley would be back in North Carolina, in college. But one job led to another, one town led to another, and one woman led to another. Now, after twenty years Blue faces the hardest question of all - is it time to go home?

For 26-year-old Dylan Hopkins, the answer is easy. He's become no one. Memories of the happier times are all he has left, as he finds himself meandering numbly through his now dull life. Though he cares about his work and family dearly, he has yet to let himself find love again. Afraid of letting go of what he once had, Dylan chooses to keep his heart buried, where it belongs, having died a long time ago.

Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girls’ school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria’s orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world.

My first real check up as an adult was with a new doctor since I was going to head off to college. I had no idea that Dr. Biggers had much BIGGER things in mind. When he found out that I had some very secret, very naughty fantasies about other men, he decided it was time for me to become a REAL MAN. Warning: This hot story contains very naughty man on man action. Only read this story if you are an adult and ready to get all hot and bothered.

Serena and Beth are best friends who couldn’t be more different—Beth is an avowed demisexual, who lacks confidence in her career and in her chances at a happy relationship due to her sexual orientation. Serena is a free spirit who oozes with confidence, both in her job and her sexual proclivities. And yet, since the moment they met, they knew they were platonic soulmates. So, when Beth decides that she officially wants to take charge of her sex life and explore the things that scare her the most, Serena is more than happy to help.

He's coaching girls for the first time... So what's the best way to relate to them? Caleb is a recent college grad and part-time volleyball coach who feels directionless in life. But when he's assigned to be an assistant coach for the club's top girls team, Caleb slowly discovers that fitting in with the team may be easier by embracing his feminine side.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or, at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamorous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.