Showing results for "cassandra" in Coming of Age

In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, the richest of nobles and the most debauched of criminals have one thing in common: the constant search for wealth, power and the next hedonistic thrill. Kel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword-Catcher – the body-double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. He has been raised alongside the prince, trained in every aspect of combat and statecraft. He and Conor are close as brothers, but Kel knows he has one destiny: to die for Conor. No other future is possible.

An enchanting New York Times and international best seller and award-winner about life, art, literature, philosophy, culture, class, privilege, and power, seen through the eyes of a 54-year-old French concierge and a precocious but troubled 12-year-old girl.

I'll be the first to admit that I live at extremes. After going 10 years locked in what felt like a dysfunctional marriage, I'm now decidedly boy-free. In nearly three years I've had no boyfriends, no flings, no dates, and no sex. For the sake of my dream career, the sacrifice has been easy. At least it was. Until he came along. Lukas Hendricks. He's rude, gorgeous, arrogant - a stone-carved wall of muscle and distraction. He's everything I know to avoid but there's no avoiding your next-door neighbor.

I found Reed and loved him more than I loved myself. We were young... beautiful... entitled. Money and private schools, our families' lavish parties, and posh New York City apartments - it was all mere window dressing. What was real was our obsessive love, which grew right along with us as we moved toward adulthood. It consumed me, and only in his arms did I feel wanted and safe. But I have a secret. It's big and, to some, unforgivable. And it's why I let Reed destroy me, or maybe I destroyed us.

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding.

For the last 10 years, he never stayed with a woman longer than it took to screw them. But then she walked in. Back then she was nothing but a little girl, but now she’s all grown up, with curves, and a smile that reminds him of everything he’s spent the last 10 years trying to forget. His attraction to her is instant, and wrong, on so many levels. He’ll do anything he can to stop it, even make her hate him if he has to.

One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles. There are 216 passengers aboard: among them a young woman taking a pregnancy test in the airplane toilet; a Wall Street millionaire flirting with the air hostess; an injured soldier returning from Afghanistan; and two beleaguered parents moving across the country with their adolescent sons, bickering over who gets the window seat. When the plane suddenly crashes in a field in Colorado, the younger of these boys, 12-year-old Edward Adler, is the sole survivor.

Vix Leonard is twelve when she meets dazzling, reckless Caitlin Somers. Invited to spend holidays on Martha's Vineyard with Caitlin and her eccentric, mysterious family, Vix is welcomed into a life totally unlike her own. As days of bold adventure give way to nights of shy discovery, she and Caitlin come together in the complications of growing up; the refuge of belonging; the pact to Never Be Ordinary . . . Until one devastating summer when a local boy changes everything.

Worldwide phenomenon Anna Todd (The After series, Imagines) presents a modern retelling of one of her favorite stories - Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Recast in the modern world, longtime and fresh fans of the beloved classic will fall in love with the March sisters all over again, told with the all the romance, sass, and drama that Anna is famous for.

For the Skinners, their lives divide into two parts: before that heady summer - of unsupervised youth and tragedy - and after. But mainly after. The events of that childhood summer bound the siblings together fiercely, but the consequences would never be erased. For it’s the million little betrayals echoing through the years that threaten to fray their last fragile ties....

I thought I knew the truth, but I didn’t. Secrets surround me. Every aspect of my life was a lie. The Bishop brothers are the only beacon of light in my dark world. They’re the only ones that can protect me, the only ones that truly care. Finally, I have the leverage I need to escape my father’s clutches, to fight back. But when the truth comes out and the puzzle pieces of our pasts come together, I’m left wondering if there will ever be a future for the Bishop’s and me?

Ellie Abela’s life has been anything but easy. Tragedy follows her wherever she goes, and she’s been a lot of places. At 20, she’s lived in over 10 different states, all because of her dad’s career in medical research. His career is just another list of the causes of tragedies in El’s life. He’s dying, and with every breath he takes closer to Heaven, Ellie dies a little bit inside, too. At 12, she lost her mom in a drunk driving accident, and in a matter of months she fears she’ll lose the last person she has in the world to cancer.

Natalie Scott's life is simple, with no strings attached. As a band photographer, she's made metal music her life, and life on tour means no relationships. At least not ones that last, and that's the way she likes it. She only has one rule. Don't date or otherwise screw around with the client. But she never said anything about love. Brent Andrews knows Natalie's rules. He's about to make sure he's an exception to them. All of them. Even ones she doesn't know she has.

Danny "Madman" Maddox isn’t supposed to make Skylar Haze's heart beat out of rhythm. At least not anymore. She hasn't seen that boyish face since the day he left to go on tour with her brother Joey's band. Now, with a major record label backing them, the band is in need of a bit of help, and when Joey asks Skylar to be the band's photographer, she can't help but say yes. Of course, Joey doesn’t know about that forbidden kiss. The one Skylar hopes Danny’s forgotten. But can she?

It is September 8, 1943, and 14-year-old Claudette Blum and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to find safety now that the Italians have broken from Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it quickly becomes an open battleground for the Nazis, the Allies, Resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians trying to survive.

Out for a hike one scorching afternoon in Sycamore, Arizona, a newcomer to town stumbles across what appear to be human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine. As news of the discovery makes its way around town, Sycamore's longtime residents fear the bones may belong to Jess Winters, the teenage girl who disappeared suddenly some 18 years earlier, an unsolved mystery that has soaked into the porous rock of the town and haunted it ever since.

In 1837, seven-year-old Thomas Wright followed in his family’s footsteps into one of England’s most dangerous coal mines. He struggled with childhood fears, working twelve-hour days, six days a week in the darkness 500 feet below ground. That was until disaster struck in one of England’s most horrific accidents that changes the direction of his life and the course of history. This is the fast-moving story of a young boy overcoming the iron-fisted rule of the massively wealthy lord of the land.

For misfit Libby Archer, social expectations for young women in Rochester, New York, in the mid-1950s don't work. Her father has died, leaving her without parents, and her well-meaning friends are pressuring her to do what any sensible single girl must do: marry a passionate, persistent hometown suitor with a promising future. Yet Libby boldly defies conventional wisdom and plans to delay marriage - to anyone - by departing for her uncle's Belfast estate.

Early in The Sweetness, an inquisitive young girl asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of sliced lemons and water when they are forced by the Germans to evacuate their ghetto. "Something sour to remind me of the sweetness," she tells her, setting the theme for what they must remember to survive. Set during World War II, the novel is the parallel tale of two Jewish girls, cousins, living on separate continents, whose strikingly different lives ultimately converge.

The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school. Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor, every feeling, is potentially postable, shareable, viral.