Showing titles in Coming of Age

Unsinkable and wrecked by grief, motherless and aimless and looking for connection, Helen Dedleder is a girl with a gift she doesn't want to use and a pack of friends who are all just helping each other get by. So cut off from the rest of the world that even the internet is blocked (never mind traffic in and out), Rosary, California, is run by evangelicals but was named by Catholics. It’s a town on very formal relations with its neighbors, one that boasts an oil refinery as well as a fairly sizable population of teenagers.

Laurie Norber, the protagonist of The Flash of Midnight, is a survivor of rape and child abuse who has managed to retain both her sense of humor and a positive outlook toward the future. Taking its inspiration from Voltaire’s Candide, The Flash of Midnight recounts the bisexual escapades of a young woman who steadfastly believes that real love is just around the corner, never imagining that in June of 1969, she will become the spark that ignites a sexual revolution at a small Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall Inn.

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.

It’s the west end of Toronto, the apartments are small, and everybody is twenty-seven and making some kind of art. In the wake of her mother’s death, Sophie pays rent by making stained glass mosaics for rich people and plays house with her childhood friend and sometimes-lover, the beautiful boy Alex. Both are from Newfoundland but move easily in this world of crowded patios and DIY movie shoots. When Sophie meets the glamorous poet Maggie, who is the downtown product of a hundred cool queer bars, she falls into a bewildered infatuation.

Dawson Angel is a teenager in small-town Kansas who has just told his best friend he is gay and soon regrets that decision. To make matters worse, he has also fallen in love with the neighbor boy, a handsome young Mennonite named Derek. Nothing seems to go right as the week progresses in this engaging tale of youth that reminds one of a modern Catcher in the Rye.

When Ahmed's parents send him to a residential treatment center known as Serenity Ridge, it's with one goal: to "fix" their son, at any cost. But eleven months of abuse and overmedication leave him desperate to escape. And when the opportunity comes, Ahmed runs away to San Francisco. There, he moves into a secret safe house shared by a group of teens. Until they become independent at eighteen, the housemates hide away from authorities, bound by rules that both protect and frustrate.

Invisible Life is the story of a young man's coming of age. Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more terrifying issues for him to confront. Being black was tough enough, but Raymond was becoming more and more conscious of sexual feelings that he knew weren't "right". He was completely committed to Sela, his longtime girlfriend, but his attraction to Kelvin, whom he had met during his last year in law school, had become more than just a friendship.

The art world falls in love with Dixie Stammers when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Her teenage son, Judas, is pathologically shy, and retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area. What he really longs for though is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends.

It’s 2006, and Casey has thrown herself into NYC’s lesbian and trans activist scene—marriage equality marches, L Word-watching parties, BDSM sex clubs, and trans rights protests. Adam tags along, having fun in places he’d never have expected, but he’s surrounded by lesbians, and it seems like the last thing he’ll find is a girlfriend. That is, until he meets Gillian. Adam is soon hopelessly, desperately in love...only there’s just one small problem. Gillian thinks he’s a trans man.

Life is meant to be an adventure rich in love & laughter. Eight very different little girls going off on adventures that most children can only dream and imagine. Be it traveling to another world straight out of an RPG game or a Fantasy anime. Or becoming superheroes, protecting their home while struggling to find the balance of a college student. Or going off to discover the urban tales that had been passed down for generations.

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 a destiny thrown upon her too soon, and one she's not even sure she wants. After killing her uncle, Hyde, and capturing his rebels, Trinity must repair relations between Humans and Angorians. She must find a way to ease their fears and assure them that Angorians will not cause them harm.

Andrew is a jock, tall and attractive with eyes you could float away in. Though, despite seeming to have the qualities that would make for a romantic love interest, he's never been in a relationship. Why? Because he's in the closet. Being gay isn't exactly suited to a guy like him. Marred with a tendency to compare himself to others—particularly to his overachieving older brother—and having witnessed a less attractive classmate score the man of his dreams, Andrew figures it may be time to start dating. And shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he resolves to do just that.

Jade Brown, a twenty-four-year-old first-generation Jamaican woman living in Toronto, must find a way to pick up the pieces and discover who she is following the mysterious death of her twin sister. Grappling with her grief, Jade seeks solace in lovers and friends during an array of hilarious and heartbreaking adventures. As she investigates some of life's most frustrating paradoxes, she holds tight to old friends and her ex-girlfriend, lifelines between past and present.

Eve has a carefully curated online life, works occasionally, and texts constantly with her best friend, Ezra. Basically, she is an archetypal LA millennial. She has also been carrying on a year-long conversation with her deceased friend Miggy over text. But when Ezra goes missing on the anniversary weekend of Miggy's death, Eve feels like her world is shattering. Over a frantic weekend Eve investigates Ezra's disappearance, scouring social media for clues, while drowning her anger and anxiety in drinks, drugs, and spiritual cleansing.

Tucker, with the help of his new assertive friend Kiara, must learn to balance his newfound freedom with school and a job, and if he meets a cute boy on the way, then that's just an added bonus. Paint is a story of self-discovery, of queerness outside the family-friendly safety net of a high school drama, and of drag queens when you need them the most.

Genocide. Jellyfish smack. Unrequited love. This is a tale of thirteen mermaid sisters, the last of their kind.

Lizzy is your average teenager, not able to take a break from life's bad idea of a joke. Her life is hell, and her parents are the demons of her prison. One bad choice after another leads her to her ultimate demise: uncovering a secret that was hidden from her since birth.

City girl Luce May's first year out of high school has been the worst. When she escapes her turbulent life in Sydney to start over at a university in the middle of nowhere, the last thing she wants is anyone in her new life to know of her past. Especially that to escape her chaotic, alcoholic mother, Luce also had to abandon her teenage sister. As Luce slowly starts to find another version of herself in this place, she also finds a new family in her eclectic group of friends.

At a time when coming out of the closet is chic, it is certainly not that way for Brad Archer. After a traumatic sexual encounter in high school, Brad, now in college, is having trouble with romantic relationships. He has dates with girls that fail miserably and continues to have horrific nightmares about both his past and the fears for his future.