Showing titles in Coming of Age

Fifteen-year-old Meredith hoped to never again see her father, who did something unspeakable to her. But after only three years in jail, he's coming back home - and she's terrified. Critically acclaimed young adult author Laura Wiess' novel deals frankly with the sensitive subject of child abuse.

When Alison Strange receives a debt claim she can’t afford to pay from the Australian government’s unemployment office, she’s caught completely off-balance. As she wrestles with a slippery bureaucracy, her history-loving grandfather bolsters her resolve with the story of their ancestor John Strange, an English cobbler who was banished to Australia for his part in a political movement. Drawing inspiration from John’s life, Alison finds her own unique way to demand a future that’s fair for all.

I was perfectly fine hanging in the shadows, but my choice to remain anonymous is taken from me. I’m thrust into the spotlight. His spotlight. Asher Beck is a golden god at Savage River High. Football star, whip-smart, and popular, we don’t belong in the same hemisphere, let alone circle. But underneath that perfection is a darkness he only reveals to me. I have no idea what I did to capture Asher’s attention, but he is relentless in his pursuit. The problem is, I can’t tell if he’s trying to break me or own me...and I don’t know which I want more.

Alexander Kingwood IV is a dark prince who wants to be King. Sara Jane Grayson is the woman he wants as his queen. When it seems the world is against them, they will fight for their happily ever after. She was my destiny. I was her downfall. We were a match made in hell. When we were together, that hell was pure heaven.

It is the early 1980s and fifteen-year-old Libby is obsessed with The Field Guide to the Trees of North America, a gift from her father before he died. She finds solace in “The Kingdom,” a stand of red oak and mountain laurel near her home in suburban Pennsylvania, where she can escape from her family and share menthols with her best friend. One night, while driving home, Libby’s mother, exhausted with the fighting in the backseat, pulls over and orders Libby’s little sister Ellen to walk home. What none of this family knows as they drive off is what will happen next.

Four years after the Keating family endured the darkest experiences of their lives, the children are still fighting to move on. Charlie's anxiety has control of his life. Angela is afraid of the dark. Brian suffers from a drug addiction. Chrissy struggles to remember what happened to them, the details forever haunting the outskirts of her mind.

It’s the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel’s dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia’s presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.

After making an unexpected connection with God via his cell phone, one man embarks on an unlikely spiritual quest in this smart, savvy, rambunctious debut from author Rick Springfield. After serendipitously stealing a mysterious self-help book called Magnificent Vibration: Discover Your True Purpose from a bookstore, Bobby calls the 1-800 number scrawled inside the front cover, only to discover that he has a direct line to God - and that God likes to mess with him.

For Pumkin Patterson, family is complicated. There’s her mother Paulette, who only sees Pumkin as a nuisance. There’s her beloved Auntie Sophie, who has always talked of she and Pumkin travelling to new horizons. And there’s her grandmother, who has always favoured Sophie over Paulette. When Sophie moves to France for work, she promises to send for her niece in one year’s time. All Pumkin has to do is pass her French entrance exam. But when Pumkin’s mother finds out, she’s determined that her sister won’t get her own way this time.

Flowers, fire and fairy tales are the elements that will forever shape nine-year-old Alice Hart's life in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, the remarkable debut by Holly Ringland. Alice Hart lives in isolation by the sea, where her mother’s enchanting flowers and their hidden messages shelter her from the dark moods of her father. When tragedy changes her life irrevocably, nine-year-old Alice goes to live with the grandmother she never knew existed, on a native flower farm that gives refuge to women who, like Alice, are lost or broken.

Janie has moved to New York to try to make it as a writer, all the while serving as part-time lover in a polyamorous relationship with Veronica and TJ and full-time nanny to their daughter, Beth. Janie's life is already incredibly full when she runs into an agent one morning who sees great potential in her - and not just as an author. As Janie's relationship with Josh blooms and her career takes off, Ronnie's happy surprise turns into a problem that even a vacation in a mountain cabin with the Baumgartners can't fix.

Ansel Bray, an artist known around the world for his tragic hiatus from the canvas. Ansel Bray, a broody, handsome man not known by me, at all. Long dark hair, blue eyes, and dimpled cheeks. I've never met her, but her image is imprinted in my mind. An angel muse who inspires me to paint again.

When your stepbrother is a hot hockey stud with more notches in his bedpost than, well anyone, he’s the perfect candidate to help you gain a little bedroom experience. At least, that's my plan this V-day.

Deep in the tobacco land of North Carolina, nothing's been the same since the boys shipped off to war and worry took their place. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is precocious and itching for adventure. Then Allie Bert Tucker wanders into town, an outcast with a puzzling past, and Lucy figures the two of them can solve any curious crime they find - just like her hero, Nancy Drew. Their chance comes when a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking, and an eccentric gives the girls a mystery to solve that takes them beyond the ordinary.

The three novels that make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.

Millie’s mind is racing and there seems to be no clear line between right and wrong. Either path leads to pain, and she’ll do anything to protect the ones she loves. So she decides to bury the truth and begin again, helping Bump launch a ranch in the wilds of Colorado. But just when she thinks she’s left her old Mississippi life behind, the facts surface in the most challenging way.

Dave is 14 years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood. Dave will soon enter high school, with adulthood and a future not far off - a future away from his mother, father, his precocious younger sister, and the wilderness where he's lived all his life. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms that summer. Martin, a pine marten (of the mustelid family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Dave and Martin set off on their own adventures, their lives, paths, and trails will cross.

Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising - and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink - The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.

Life, death, and rebirth - in Becar, who you are in this life will determine your next life. Yet there is hope - you can change your destiny with the choices you make. But for the darkest individuals, there is no redemption: you come back as a kehok, a monster, and are doomed to be a kehok for the rest of time. Unless you can win the Races. After a celebrated career as an elite kehok rider, Tamra became a professional trainer. Then a tragic accident shattered her confidence, damaged her reputation, and left her nearly broke.

Can a guilty conscience keep wounds from healing? Fine arts major, Candace Parker, grew up with a mother who thinks image is everything, and her daughter’s perfection will never be good enough. About to graduate college and pursue her dreams of becoming a professional ballerina, Candace decides it’s time to let go and have a little fun. But fun is short-lived when a brutal attack leaves her completely shattered. The memories that consume and torment Candace are starting to destroy her when she meets Ryan Campbell, a successful bar owner.