Showing titles in Coming of Age

The only love Ari has known is Morgan. Engaged and planning a life with him in New York, Ari is shocked when Morgan sits her down one rainy afternoon and tells her their decade-long relationship is over. They’ve been over for a long time now, he says—and Ari knows he’s right.

When quiet, shy Elinor ‘Mouse’ Haywood receives a proposal of marriage from the very eligible Frederick, she thinks it’s a love match. But little does she know that she has actually been the subject of a business translation between her aristocratic in-laws, who need money, and her father, a wealthy, self-made man. Unhappily married, but the mother of a son she adores, she decides she’s made her bed and is going to lie in it. But when, she finds herself aboard the Titanic, with her husband, son and maid Molly, bound for America, she is presented with an opportunity she cannot pass up.

This novella tells the story of a ten-year-old Black boy named Pictorial Review “Pic” Jackson, who lives with his grandfather in North Carolina in the 1940s. After his grandfather dies and Pic is living with another relative, his older brother, Slim, shows up to take him out of that dysfunctional home, and they journey from the rural South to New York City. They head for Harlem, where Slim lives with his girlfriend and where Pic sees firsthand the economic hard times his brother is experiencing. After losing job after job, Slim sends his pregnant girlfriend off to San Francisco.

Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob's whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.

Demetri and his sister, Ava. Ava and her brother, Demetri. As fiercely competitive as they are codependent, the two have long been locked in an emotionally charged relationship. Ava, defiant and impassioned, grew up in the shadow of soft, charming, and intellectual Demetri. But after a sudden and devastating event, it is Demetri who finds himself emotionally ruined, whereas Ava has no time nor patience for grief. As they grow up, following each other from city to city, the siblings are set on parallel paths as artists, thinkers, and lovers.

Clare is supposed to be the grown-up one. Married to the love of her life, with a major deal for her first novel, she has everything she thought she wanted. So then why does it all feel so wrong? When she agrees to a weeklong vacation in Hawai'i with five of her oldest friends as they each approach thirty, she is hoping for an escape with the people who know her best. But when a terrifying news alert shatters their peace, it becomes harder to ignore how much the world has changed since they were teenagers.

Maya and Natasha are twin sisters born in the midst of the Siege of Leningrad in 1941 and immediately abandoned by their mother, a prima ballerina at the Kirov Ballet who would rather die than not dance. Taken in by their mother’s best friend at the Kirov, the girls are raised to be dancers themselves. The Vaganova Ballet Academy—and the totalitarian Soviet regime—is the only world they know. In 1958, now seniors at the Vaganova at the height of the Cold War, all Maya and Natasha and their classmates want is to dance with the Kirov, and to join the company on its tour to America next year.

When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.

On Stenland, there comes a time known as skeld season: one day, any woman on the island can wake with three black lines on her forehead, the mark of a skeld. Skeld season comes around without warning, and while each window of time lasts only three months, anyone a skeld turns to stone is very much dead. That's how Tess’s mother killed Soren’s parents. Maybe for this reason alone, Tess and Soren should not have fallen in love. Since the time her mother was a skeld, Tess has wanted to leave Stenland, to run from the windswept island, from her family and friends.

Little Alien lives with her mum and her dad in the South-East of England. Her mum has a 'how-to' guide for every situation, and her dad is always kind and always right. And there is her best friend Bobby, who coincidentally has a bob. But it is only when Little Alien sees a documentary about the Voynich Manuscript - a mediaeval codex written in an unknown language and script - that she begins to suspect that there are other people who feel just like her.

Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our narrator is only a lonely little girl living in southeast England, who doesn’t understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript—an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language—Little Alien experiences something she hasn’t before: hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they’re from another planet? Convinced the Voynich Manuscript holds the answers she needs, Little Alien turns to the place she feels at peace: the library.

It’s 1959, and Freda Gilroy has just arrived at Nashville’s Fisk University, eager to begin her studies and uphold the tradition of Black Excellence instilled in her by her parents back home in Chicago. Coming from an upper-middle-class lifestyle where Black and white people lived together in relative harmony, Freda is surprised to discover the menace of racism down South. When a chance encounter with an intriguing young man draws her into the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Freda finds herself caught between two worlds, and two loves.

Diana Wood has thrown her life in the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. Everything is a mess. After years of watching her safe, steady marriage grow strained, she and her husband, Oliver, decided to separate. Now, he’s embarked on a new career and what seems to be a satisfying dating life, while she’s eating cereal for dinner in an empty kitchen after her daughter has gone to bed. When an important client asks Diana to come to Paris, she jumps at the opportunity—and not only for professional reasons.

Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their bill of rights, and then return home and help drive the British out of India using their own laws against them. Before he leaves, his family insists he fulfill his arranged marriage and is hastily betrothed to a young woman he hardly knows. He arrives in London in 1931. He is not dressed for the British rain, and, shivering, rings the doorbell of the people who have agreed to host him in this strange land.

As Mara and Tom navigate their break-up/non-break-up, Mara becomes fixated on the perfect couple living in the flat above her. While her best friend accuses her of being self-involved and her already overfamiliar boss keeps getting her drunker and drunker, the Happy Couple become a symbol for everything Mara and Tom could have been – but, crucially, are not.

At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn; he comes from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps; his eccentric brilliance is all but impossible to repress. While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family’s embrace, he avoids going home; with little in common, they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an elite college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall Street movement.

A dazzling debut novel set in 1980s New York, when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility—and looming danger.

Following the death of his beloved father, Arthur is sent to Canada for safety with a group of evacuees on the eve of the Second World War. Alone and afraid, plagued with seasickness, and an unknown future, he can't imagine things getting any worse. Far from what he feared, Arthur is welcomed with warmth and kindness. But even on the other side of the world, the war can’t be escaped and before long, his new family are touched by it too. Faced with another dramatic change in his life, everything starts to change again for Arthur.

Liyen, the heir to the mortal kingdom of Tianxia, has been taught that her most important duty is to serve the immortal Queen of the Golden Desert, who rescued them from the shadowy Wuxin. Since then, Tianxia was bound in service to the immortals. But when her grandfather steals a magical flower from the queen to cure Liyen from a vicious poison, the powerful God of War is sent to attack Tianxia, plunging it into chaos.

Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating – and each other – to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and rollercoaster relationship. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.