Showing titles in Coming of Age

The harrowing adventures of FitzChivalry Farseer and his enigmatic friend, the Fool, continue in Robin Hobb's triumphant follow-up to Fool's Assassin. But Fool's Quest is more than just a sequel. With the artistry and imagination her fans have come to expect, Hobb builds masterfully on all that has gone before, revealing devastating secrets and shocking conspiracies that cast a dark shadow over the history of Fitz and his world - a shadow that now stretches to darken all future hope.

American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was 13: study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day.

Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His mother, Jane, is a famous feminist author; his father, Jonathan, is an expert at getting "lost boys" to open up. They both work at a psychiatric clinic that has attracted staff and patients from around the world. Adam is a renowned debater, expected to win a national championship before he heads to college. He is one of the cool kids, ready to fight or, better, freestyle about fighting if it keeps his peers from thinking of him as weak.

Christy Award-winning author Jennifer Erin Valent concludes her critically acclaimed Calloway Summers trilogy with this compelling gem. In the summer of 1938, the dreams of 19-year-old Jessilyn Lassiter begin to come true when her long-time crush falls for her. But their budding romance is interrupted when a young black doctor comes to her small Virginia town, capturing the heart of her best friend and attracting the racial hostility that’s been simmering just beneath the surface.

Eleven-year-old Grace Carter has a talent for hiding things. She's had plenty of practice, burying thoughts and feelings that might anger her strict evangelical pastor father. The Knowing, as Grace calls it, offers glimpses of people's pasts and futures. It enables her to see into the depth of her mother's sadness, and even allows Grace to talk to Isaac, her twin brother who died at birth. To her wise, loving Aunt Pearl, the Knowing is a family gift; to her daddy, it's close to witchcraft.

Miller Stratton is a survivor. After a harrowing childhood of poverty, he will do anything it takes to find security for himself and his mom. He’s putting all his hopes and dreams in the fragile frame of his guitar and the beauty he creates with its strings and his soulful voice. Until Violet. No one expects to meet the love of their life at age 13. But the spunky rich girl steals Miller’s heart and refuses to give it back.

The Bartender' s Tale stars Tom Harry and his 12-year-old son, Rusty, who live alone and run a bar in a small Montana town in the early 1960s. Their lives are upended when Proxy, a woman from Tom's past, and her beatnik daughter, Francine, breeze into town. Is Francine, as Proxy claims, the unsuspected legacy of her and Tom’s past? Without a doubt she is an unsettling gust of the future, upending every certainty in Rusty’s life and generating a mist of passion and pretense that seems to obscure everyone’s vision but his own.

It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him—and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.

Just days after the close of World War II, Bess Myerson, the daughter of poor Russian Jewish immigrants living in the Bronx, is competing in the Miss America pageant. At stake: a $5,000 scholarship. The tension and excitement in Atlantic City's Warner Theatre are palpable, especially for traumatized Jews rooting for one of their own. So begins Bessie. Drawing on biographical and historical sources, Bessie reimagines the early life of Bess Myerson, who, in 1945 at age twenty-one, remarkably rises to become one of the most famous women in America.

Growing up in the nineties in New York City as the only child of famous parents was both a blessing and a curse for Isabelle Manning. Her beautiful society hostess mother, Claire, and New York Times bestselling author father, Ward, were the city’s intellectual It couple. Ward’s glamorous obligations often took him away from Isabelle, but Claire made sure her childhood was always filled with magic and love. Now an adult, after many false starts and the unexpected death of her mother, she faces her upcoming thirty-fifth birthday alone and on the verge of a breakdown.

Every day you spend with those you love is magic, be careful to recognise it before the magic runs out Is Michael a kid who's running wild and skipping school, or just a nice young lad spending time looking after his mother? His aunt has one idea about it, and he, another. But when Mum takes him to see the final Harry Potter film during school hours, the trouble only begins to start.

Love, Sex, Hate, and Bullying whilst growing up in the Thatcher years. Matt grew up gay in the 1980s, in a landscape shaped by political correctness, multiculturalism, and Section 28. When he comes face to face with one of the guys who bullied him and his friends, all those years ago, he's forced to reflect on everything that happened, how much of it was due to the political climate and restrictions to free speech. Remembering those first fumblings with teenage boys—a time of innocence locked inside a condemning society, he wonders what can be done to reduce bigoted views and ...

It's a story about being unaware of your own struggles, fearing rejection, feeling alone, striving to be a good person, and trying to please everyone except yourself. It's about falling in love, facing complete rejection, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery—asking, Who am I now?

Summer, 1986. The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin—newly arrived from India—into their house in rural Wyoming where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die. According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West.

Fourteen-year-old Ida was born with a hole in her heart. Forbidden from most physical activities and considered strange by her teachers and peers, she prefers spending time alone, memorizing countries and capitals on her globe and imagining the world outside the tiny logging town of Mineral, Washington. One afternoon, in walks her cousin Elna, here to stay for a few weeks. Ida hasn't seen Elna since they were young, and she's immediately drawn to her older cousin, who's everything Ida is not: confident, glamorous, charismatic, and daring.

Peter Leroy recalls a childhood journey of discovery that he made from the mouth of the Bolotomy River to its source, traveling with his best (and imaginary) friend Rodney “Raskol” Lodkochnikov. The journey begins with the work of turning a packing case (which Cap’n Andrew Leech intends to use, later, as a coffin) into a shallow-draft boat, it involves encounters with a philosophical vagrant and a gaggle of beautiful nymphs, and it ends with the metaphor of life as a river turned on its head. "Life on the Bolotomy concerns the river journey of Peter and his chum Raskolnikov to the ...

Rowan: I was supposed to keep my distance. She was my brother’s best friend—the one girl I was never meant to touch. But when Meera crashed into my life, full of fire and chaos and a heart too big for this world... staying away became impossible. Now, I’ll fight through every shadow of my past to claim her. She’s mine. And I’ll worship every inch of her until she knows it. Meera: I thought I knew what love was... Until Rowan Everhart kissed me like I was the only woman he'd ever crave. Until he stripped me bare—body and soul—and made me believe in forever. But loving a man ...

When you'll do anything to protect your family from a monster, sometimes that means you'll have to give them up. Being a closeted gay teen is never easy, but it’s worse when your family are right-wing, religious zealots. But when Myles Maxwell-Fox’s father is elected UK Prime Minister, Myles strikes a plan to leave home after first coming out to the press in front of 10 Downing Street. He wants to start living his life; to oppose his father’s family-values agenda; to search for the boyfriend taken from him two years before; and the most important reason – a secret reason …one not ...

“Sarda’s main strength lies in how he breathes life into the characters and their world, both of which feel fully lived-in and authentic.” — Kirkus Reviews Bakersfield, California, 1978. At a drive-thru dairy store off Highway 99, three lives have a rendezvous with fate. For local trailer trash, Hanson’s Cash-n-Carry is a dream job. For the confirmation class at St. Paul’s, it’s an entitlement. For a big-city cop with a drinking problem, it’s a last chance. When he’s offered a job on the steps of church, young Frank Lehmann thinks he’s moving up in the world. Nobody told...

American Vineyard is a selected finalist in the 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards! As reviewed in Publisher's Weekly: Vincent Lowry "demonstrates his versatility with this memorable coming-of-age narrative." In 1980s America, six adolescents struggle to secretly build a ranch fence to repay a large debt caused by their own carelessness. As the fence construction nears completion, an unexpected evil strikes the children, testing their character and resolve to right an unfathomable wrong. American Vineyard is Vincent Lowry’s finest coming-of-age novel about youth and innocence. ...