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

Farah moves into Liberty House - an arcadia, a community in harmony with nature - at the tender age of six, with her family. The commune's spiritual leader, Arcady, preaches equality, non-violence, anti-speciesism, free love, and uninhibited desire for all. At 15, Farah learns she is intersex, and begins to go beyond the confines of gender, as she explores the arc of her own desires. What, Farah asks, is a man or a woman? What does it mean to be part of a community? What is utopia when there are refugees nearby seeking shelter who cannot enter?

Abigail Milton was born into the British middle class, but her family has landed in unthinkable debt. To ease their burdens, Abby's parents send her to America to live off the charity of their old friend. When she arrives in Charleston at the age of 17, Abigail discovers that the man her parents raved about is a disagreeable widower who wants little to do with her. Just as she begins to grow comfortable in her new life, she overhears her benefactor planning the escape of a local slave - and suddenly, everything she thought she knew about Douglas Elling is turned on its head.

After the death of their abusive patriarch, sixteen-year-old Desiree "Dez" Sarpe and her family moved to the high plains of Wyoming for a fresh start. Life is quieter now, but peace doesn't put food on the table. Unable to get a job, Dez reluctantly stays home—before following a track in the long grass and finding Granny Iyaga. Granny hires Dez for housecleaning, and also begins teaching her peculiar things. School starts, winter approaches, and for the first time, Dez begins to relax.

A surfing, boy-crazy teenager comes of age in the summer of 1957 in this classic novel that inspired movies, television, and created an American pop culture icon. This is Franzie, part Holden Caulfield, part Lolita. The guys call her Gidget—short for girl midget. Based on the experiences of his daughter, Frederick Kohner's novel became an international sensation with an irrepressible heroine whose voice still echoes every thrill, every fear, and every hope that every teenager ever had about growing up.

Always awkward in her 5'10" frame, Melanie Reeves finds her saving grace through basketball. She's the pride of Coach Thompson, who holds the keys to a college scholarship. Jordan Solano's power lies in her beauty and sex appeal. Never afraid of breaking the rules, she engages in a scandalous flirtation with the school's married basketball coach. But Coach T's job and reputation are placed in jeopardy after Jordan charges him with rape. Jordan's own reputation has the school administration unwilling to believe her. That is, until she makes a startling claim—she's not the only victim.

Fourteen-year-old Sam Snyder thinks he is going on a short vacation to visit his godfather. Instead, his adoptive mother drops him off at a Baptist reform school in the backwoods of Missouri. Surrounded by razor-wire fences, violent at-risk youth, and oppressive staff, he quickly realizes that he's not in California anymore. Between fistfights, fire-and-brimstone sermons, and falling in love with a girl who he's never even spoken to, Sam struggles to keep his unbridled tongue and teenage lust in check in hopes of an early release.

After years of bartending her way across Europe, Shay Lavji has seen almost everything the continent has to offer, but there's one country she hasn't crossed off her bucket list yet: Norway. It's not that she doesn't want to visit the land of the midnight sun - far from it; she's obsessed with the culture and is dying to see the majestic fjords for herself. What she's not dying to do is run into her Norwegian ex-boyfriend, Anders Johansson, who broke her heart in America eight years ago before returning to his ancestral home.

In My Good Son, award-winning author Yang Huang explores both the deep power and the profound burdens of parental love through the story of Mr. Cai, a tailor in post-Tiananmen China, and his only son Feng. Like many of his generation, Mr. Cai's most fervent desire is for his son to succeed. He manages to get Feng to pass his entrance exams, and turns to an American customer, Jude, to sponsor his studies in the States.

On a hot June day in 1965, two six-year-old boys, Gareth and Jack, compete to see who can climb higher up a tree. When Jack falls and loses his eye on a thorn bush, the accident sets off a series of events that will bind the boys together for the rest of their lives. When the best friends meet albino twins Clara and Blanca, a shared fate unfolds. With Gareth and Jack's help, the twins are able to reclaim their lives and leave their nightmarish past behind them.

Twenty-year-old Lilja is in love. As a young university student, she is quickly smitten with the intelligent, beautiful young man from school who quotes Derrida and reads Latin and cooks balanced vegetarian meals. Before she even realizes, she's moved in with him, living in his cramped apartment, surrounded by sour towels and flat Diet Cokes. As the newfound intimacy of sharing a shower and a bed fuels her desire to please her partner, his acts of nearly imperceptible abuse continue to mount undetected.

Set over the course of one Sunday, The Slow Midnight on Cypress Avenue is a collection of interconnected vignettes that takes the listener through the streets and across the sidewalks of Cypress Avenue - an unkempt afterthought, just a place that sits at the neighborhood border edge of Ridgewood Queens, New York.

Hero of Jutland in World War I, Kelly Maguire progresses rapidly through navy ranks during the dangerous post-war years. Amid the Russian Civil War, British forces must rescue thousands of terrified White army men from rampaging Communist militias. Maguire gets stuck in, risking everything. From Russia, he moves on to China and a gunboat incident on the Yangtze. His resolve is tested when he must choose between his childhood sweetheart to a wealthy aristocrat.

Ray Shepard is a wealthy architect who has mystified his friends by marrying Evelyn, a woman who works at a nail salon. Evelyn, in turn, hides a secret past about her former life in the circus, her ex-husband's mysterious death, and the colorful tattoos she carefully conceals under her clothes. When Evelyn starts to cave under the pressure of living in Ray's rarified world, she suggests they take in Ingrid, a 16-year-old girl with blue hair, a pet iguana, and no place to stay for the summer.

For Noah Sullivan, being the best friend of Jake Nelson has never been easy. It's been a rocky road since kindergarten when Jake duct-taped Noah to his chair before recess. With just six weeks to high school graduation, Jake accidentally blows his drunken ass up on his grandfather's tractor, and Noah finds himself immersed not only in a whirlwind of grief, but on a quest to find a mystery girl from Jake's past.

Head down. Don't look up. Never make eye contact. Those were the words I lived by growing up, the words that protected me in an unsafe home. But words are only letters, and eventually even they couldn't keep his hands off me. Hoping to leave behind the shattered life of my past, I find myself in a boring, small town, with an aunt I've never met, and at a school I loathe. But soon I learn that not everything in this world is as black and white as I've determined.

Falon Shaw is the go-to photographer for celebrities in New York City. She's young, beautiful, and driven. She's determined to be the best, and she's not about to let anyone get in her way. She dreams of a future filled with travel and photographs of places far away from the only world she's ever known. Music is Asher Foster's passion. After he dug himself out of the pit of his addictions, he turned his life around. He found not only solace on the stage, but fame as well. He's trying to put his demons behind him.

As Rolling Stone magazine prepares an issue on successful rock star marriages, they sit down with Brayden and Lily Vanderburg. After all, the two have been a couple since they were 16 years old. But there is more to the story than meets the eye, and their love took a slight detour before finding happily ever after. Told in flashbacks from the present to the past, Brayden and Lily share the story of their unbreakable love.

Maddy and Reid have seen their fair share of trials and tribulations, of love and loss. Facing down the biggest challenges of their young lives, they managed to survive and endure. With the future stretching out before them, they must learn to navigate new and unfamiliar paths.

Minding Ben invites listeners into the private world of one of the anonymous West Indian babysitters who have peopled the lives of so many young urban families for decades. Grace left Trinidad for New York with hopes for a better life and education. As she struggles to adjust to her new life - and to determine just what shape her American Dream will take - Grace finds work as a nanny for the unconscionable Bruckners, a job that pays meager wages for its demanding and humiliating responsibilities.

In the long, hot Illinois summer of 1973, insecure, motherless Jamie falls under the dangerous spell of her older, more worldly cousin Fawn, who's come to stay with Jamie and her uncle as penance for committing an "unmentionable act". It is a time of awakenings and corruptions, of tragedy and loss, as Jamie slowly discovers the extent to which Fawn will use anything and anyone to further her own ends - and recognizes, perhaps too late, her own complicity in the disaster that takes shape around them.