Showing titles in Coming of Age

Thora, August and Hugo come from different worlds—one an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old elite and one an ordinary boy from out of town. But over the course of two sky-blue summers in Stockholm, they are drawn together magnetically. The novel opens years later, when Hugo, long estranged from Thora and August, is visited by their daughter—who has questions about her parents that she believes Hugo can answer—and the memories of those luminous days come flooding back.

Lei Ling Wen is lonely. Bored of her demanding after-school schedule of tuition, study and violin lessons, she struggles to see eye to eye with her strict Chinese-Malaysian mother. When Lei Ling is befriended by elegant, worldly socialite Gigi Nu, she is enchanted by the realm of luxury and freedom that suddenly opens up to her. Gigi encourages Lei Ling to flout her routines and treats her to designer products and expensive meals, and soon Lei Ling finds herself caught between two lives, and increasingly at odds with her exasperated mother.

Meet Sofie. The history of her sexuality begins when she loses her virginity to Walter the recruitment consultant. So, naturally, she thought that things could only improve from there. But she was wrong. It seems Sofie's been wrong about a lot of things. First, she thought she was into men: wrong. Then she met Frida and thought she was set for life: wrong again. Turns out, facing up to everything she thought she knew about herself requires a lot of trial and error.

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.

Michigan, 1985. The drowning of a teenage girl causes ripples in the small town of Kettle Lake, though for most the waters settle quickly. For sixteen year old Joanne Kennedy, however, the tragedy dredges up untold secrets and causes her mother to drift farther from reality and her family. When troubled newcomer Lucinda arrives in town, she offers Joanne a chance of real friendship, and together the teenagers push against the boundaries of family, self-image, and their sexuality during the tension of a long, stifling summer.

Long ago, Andrew made a childhood wish and kept it in a silver box. When it finally comes true, he wishes he hadn’t.... Long ago, Ben made a promise, and he had a dream: to travel to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve. When he finally makes it, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined.... Ben and Andrew keep meeting in unexpected places, and the intense relationship that develops seems to be guided by fate. Or is it? What if the very thing that draws them together is tainted by past secrets that threaten everything?

"There’s nothing there." The words may as well have been a death sentence to young Declan. Without mana, there could be no studying at the sky-piercing Pinnacle Towers, there could be no great monster hunts, and there could be no following in his father’s legendary footsteps. He’d be a cripple. But when a terrible accident forces him to flee, Declan learns the true nature of his mana. Just because it doesn’t resonate at any known frequency doesn’t mean it isn’t magic. Just because he can’t cast the same spells as everyone else doesn’t mean he isn’t a mage.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong...and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic...and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society will never stand for it. What else can they do but enter into a ‘lavender marriage’ and carry on indulging their true natures in secret?

It is June and our ten-year-old heroine is sad. She knows she will not get to leave her neighbourhood that summer, and the beach is far, far away. And that clouds like the bottom of a donkey's belly will hover all summer over her town, high among the volcanoes of northern Tenerife. But she has a best friend, Isora. And she likes everything about Isora. The colour of her arms and her hair and her eyes. Her handwriting and the way she writes the letter g with a huge tail. The way she calls her Shit because poop is a beautiful thing like the mist round the pines.

Sarah never admits that she’s his mother, but the beautiful boy has watched her survive as a “lot lizard”: a prostitute working the West Virginia truck stops. Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever.

Supernatural creatures create chaos across an unforgiving Western landscape in the first book of a propulsive and cinematic fantasy adventure starring ever fearless Nettie Lonesome. Nettie Lonesome dreams of a greater life than toiling as a slave in the sandy desert. But when a stranger attacks her, Nettie wins more than the fight. Now she's got friends, a good horse, and a better gun. But if she can't kill the thing haunting her nightmares and stealing children across the prairie, she'll lose it all - and never find out what happened to her real family.

It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ballroom scene, where 17-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world and has a yearning to help create a family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the ballroom circuit.

In the North of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of its own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice?

From syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito comes a wildly inventive and hysterically funny novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fame, Risky Business, Dead Poets Society, and The Catcher in the Rye.

Née et élevée dans la secte Les Enfants de Dieu, Lauren Hough est trimballée avec sa famille d'un continent à l'autre, vit dans des foyers surpeuplés et connaît la pauvreté. Les enfants subissent notamment de nombreux abus sexuels lors de « nuits de partage » avec des adultes. À l'âge de 15 ans, Lauren quitte la secte avec sa mère et son frère pour aller vivre chez sa grand-mère au Texas.

August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. He carries the weight of their lofty expectations, the shame of facing himself, and the haunting memory of a mother he never knew. It's his first semester and pressures aside, August is making friends and doing well in his classes. He even almost has a girlfriend. There's only one problem: he can't stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé.

Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone - or so they think. But after being labeled 'the most homophobic town in America', a group of queer activists are moving in, and everything is about to change. Linda welcomes the newcomers. The less they know about the death of her son, the better. Avery is furious at being uprooted from her life in LA. She dreads her classmates discovering that her mom is the head of the queer task force. And Gabe, a lifelong Big Burr resident, is no longer sure about the life he's built with his wife.

Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, 15-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead. But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls in love with Carmen.

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.