Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Coming of Age

David is a freshly minted NYU grad who's working a not-quite-entry-level job, falling in love, and telling his parents he's studying for the LSAT. He starts a Tumblr blog, typing out posts on his BlackBerry under his desk - a blog that becomes wildly popular and brings him to the attention of major media ( The New York Times) as well as the White House. But his outward fame doesn't quell his confusion about the world and his direction in it.

Leopold Portman, a young IT manager a few years out of college, dreams of settling down in Philly's bucolic suburbs with his fiancé, Nora. A talented singer in mourning for her mother, Nora has abandoned a promising opera career and wonders what her destiny holds. Her best friend, Stephen, Leopold's brother, dithers in his seventh year of graduate school and privately questions Leo and Nora's relationship. On June 16, 2004, the three are brought together - first for a funeral, then for an annual Bloomsday party. As the long-simmering tensions between them come to a head, they are forced to confront the choices of their pasts and their hopes for the future.

>In this beautifully imaginative collection, young people attempt to negotiate the often surreal terrain of childhood and adolescence where family, friends, clergy, and teachers often pose a threat instead of providing safe harbor. At the heart of the collection is the relationship between the meek narrator, his best friend alpha-male Clip, and the near-feral Roger - but there are also agoraphobic mothers, gorgeous babysitters from New Zealand, paranoid stoned veterans, and deeply sad older sisters.

Bright, ambitious Sophie Landgraf has landed a job as a Wall Street analyst. The small-town girl finally has her ticket to the American elite, but she doesn’t realize the toll it will take — on her boyfriend, on her family, and on her. It isn’t long before Sophie is floundering in this male-dominated world, and things are about to get worse. With the financial crisis looming, Sophie becomes embroiled in a multibillion-dollar merger that could make or break her career.

Life shouldn’t be about picking up the pieces. Beth Bradshaw has spent her life hiding from her tragic past. From the moment a trusted family friend steals her innocence until the moment another rescues her, she struggles to just survive. Surrounded by the comfort and protection of her extended family, Beth embarks on a journey of healing far from the horrors of her home. In her darkest moments, she meets a boy named Ryan. For one incredible summer, Ryan shows Beth what it’s like to act her own age.

Mayu. Mayu. Mayu. His whispered plea intertwines with a girl's silent cry. Help. Help. Somebody help. Everywhere Mayu turns she can feel the unspoken cries of the suffering. No one else seems to notice those most in need - but Mayu is compelled to do something. When she meets seven-year-old Anna, whose eyes speak to the unthinkable abuses in her past, Mayu knows the only escape for this victim is more violence. Mayu must unearth a brutal courage she never knew she had…Help. Help. Somebody help.

A failed, alcoholic ex-marketing guru is sent to Ohio on a last long-shot assignment, in search of innovative idea that can save an ailing food company. After an accident in a mall parking lot, he's rescued by a trio of teenagers who reluctantly agree to share an average night in their average lives with him. What follows - bonding, secrets, and ultimately tragedy - reveal truths to both teens and guru that none are fully prepared to confront.

Alex works in a gallery in the small Connecticut town where he moved after inheriting his parents' house. One day, at a local CPR class, he meets Tea, a young woman and aspiring artist who invents a mutual acquaintance named Whitmore as a means of breaking the ice and introducing herself. As their relationship deepens, Alex becomes preoccupied with imagining who Whitmore might be, considering Whitmore to be a paragon of masculine perfection. But when the Whitmore myth begins to unravel, so does Alex's relationship with Tea.

Russia, 1945: For Petka, a rambunctious 12-year-old boy with dreams too big for his tiny village, the prospect of invasion is dangerously thrilling. He watches the Red Army troops march off to engage the enemy, and wages his own war - against boredom, bullies, and his lot in life as a bastard in a backwoods world. Secretly raising a wolf in his grandmother’s goat barn, happily raising hell with the local troops, stowing away in a shipment of bootleg booze destined for the combat zone, and defying death by the noose, Petka eagerly takes all he can from life.

Finding herself even further estranged from relatives and friends, Fiona is drawn to the one man who wants nothing to do with her. He is her rumored father, Patrick Grady, so cruel and unstable that her Aunt Arlene and Uncle Charles Hollis fear for her safety. But, as always, Fiona will listen to no one. Determined to make Grady acknowledge their relationship, she pursues him in spite of his threats and increasingly erratic behavior.

Fred is the sole offspring of Lenny Snyder, the famous (or notorious) pied piper of the counterculture, and in middle age he hates being reminded of it. But neither can he ignore any longer his psychedelically bizarre childhood. From infancy, for instance, he was called Freedom (in fact his given name) not only by those who should have known him but also by members of the burgeoning movement led by his father, who happily exploited having his wife and his toddling, then walking and talking, and finally observant son in tow.

The end of the world begins as literal fire rains down from the heavens. Ancient gods are released from their prison, eager to reestablish their long-lost power. But Rachel Deneuve has bigger, more contemporary concerns than a divine war. Her son Adam is in the middle of a fight against leukemia, and Rachel would much rather battle cancer than gods. But when humans begin picking sides and fighting escalates, their home in Baltimore becomes a war zone.

Welcome to The Egg, an off-campus geodesic dome where David Fuffman and his crew of alienated Princeton students train for what might be the end of days: America is in a perpetual state of war, climate disasters create a global state of emergency, and scientists believe time itself may be collapsing. Funded by the charismatic Mathias Blue and fueled by performance enhancers and psychedelic drugs, a student revolution incubates at The Egg, inspired by the superheroes that dominate American culture. The arrival of Haley Roth - an impassioned heroine with a dark secret - propels David and Mathias to expand their movement across college campuses nationwide.

Milo Slade, a 33-year-old home healthcare aide, is witnessing the rapid dissolution of his three-year marriage to a polished, high-powered attorney named Christine. Though Milo doesn't quite know the root of his marital problems, he inevitably blames himself, or more specifically, he faults the demands his obsessive compulsive personality place upon him. Yet Christine is still none the wiser about these inexplicable quirks as Milo has painstakingly hidden them from her and everyone else for years. No one knows the true Milo, and such is the root of his profound loneliness.

Juliette has come to Tel Aviv to be with the love of her life. But when she shows up at Elias’s apartment, he’s with another woman. With nowhere else to go, Juliette falls in with a tight-knit group of French expats living in this city by the sea. There’s Manu, the retired adult film star turned real estate agent; Diabolo, a former mobster and aspiring media mogul; and Olga, a head-turning beauty who becomes fast friends with Juliette. When Elias, a film school dropout, initiates a scheme intended to make him some fast cash, he unwittingly gets Juliette and Olga thrown in jail.

Raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregon ranch, Marlo has always been insulated. The outside world, which the ranchers call “the Disaster”, is a casualty of ravaging climate change, a troubled landscape on the brink of catastrophe. For as long as Marlo can remember, the unknown that lies beyond the borders of her utopia has been a curious obsession. But just as she plans her escape into the chaos of the real world, a charismatic new resident gives her a compelling reason to stay.

In this novel, award-winning author Dale Peck recounts the childhood of his father, Dale Peck Sr. Raised in poverty with seven brothers and sisters in suburban Long Island, terrorized by an abusive mother, Dale Sr.’s life changes when his alcoholic father dumps him at his uncle’s dairy farm in upstate New York. There, he begins to thrive, finding real love and connection with his Uncle Wallace and Aunt Bess. But ultimately, he is unable to outrun the chaos and violence of his old life.

A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up.

Thanks to her wealthy and well-connected family, twenty-six-year-old Marta is used to getting whatever she wants. And what she wants is a good time. That is, until her father's wife - the woman who raised her - becomes ill. Beautiful young Marta is forced to witness her unfaithful, brutish father abandon her adoptive mother in her final moments. After her father's swift remarriage, Marta is surprised to discover that she is now the sole heir of her late mother's sizeable estate.

At thirteen, William Sheppard was sent to the Swope Ranch Boys’ Reformatory for stabbing his abusive father in the chest with a pocketknife. Buried deep in the Colorado Mountains, Swope is shrouded in legend and defined by one prevailing rumor: the boys who go in never come out the same. Days from civilization with only one accessible road - any prisoner who attempts to escape will be shot down without hesitation.