Showing titles in Coming of Age

Written in an urban vernacular that’s electrifying and intimate, On the Come Up introduces a heroine whose voice is irrepressible, dynamic, and unstintingly honest. Thirteen-year-old AnnMarie Walker dreams of a world beyond Far Rockaway, where the sway of the neighborhood keeps her tied to old ideas about success. While attending a school for pregnant teens, AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Astonishingly, improbably, and four months before she’s due to give birth - she lands a lead role.

The remarkable first novel by a young, gay, black author who fashioned a deeply moving and compelling coming-of-age story out of the controversial issues of bisexuality and AIDS Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more...

Two Spirit is a name given to women, and also men, in Native America who are considered born with two spirits- male and female. In America, butches are those women, those heroes of the feminist movement, of women everywhere who look for the strength and heart of a two spirt woman.

In 1945, when Billy May was 14 years old and alone, three local boys witnessed an incident in which Billy May's sexuality was called into question. Determined to teach her a lesson she would never forget, they orchestrated a brutal attack that changed the dynamics of the tiny coal mining village of Cedar Hollow, West Virginia forever. Thirty years after the brutal attack, living in solitude on top of Crutcher Mountain, Billy May discovers the hideout of a young girl - a girl who just happens to be the daughter of one of the boys who attacked Billy May so long ago.

Daron Marks is a young guitar player with a dream: to make it big like the guys he grew up idolizing in New Jersey - or at least escape his dysfunctional family. He makes it as far as music school in Rhode Island and the rock clubs of Boston beckon him. But it's hard to succeed from the closet.

Pierpaolo è cresciuto in un quartiere popolare alla periferia di Napoli, ma ha avuto la fortuna di nascere in alto, all'ultimo piano di una delle palazzine innalzate dal padre, e da quella posizione privilegiata lui e i genitori dominano la giungla di tetti, antenne e terrazzi abusivi sotto di loro. Studia medicina per accontentare i suoi, esce con le ragazze per non deludere gli amici, convinto che assecondando le aspettative degli altri possa difendersi da se stesso: ha vent'anni e ha appena capito di essere gay.

Vi è mai capitato di sentirvi smarriti, eppure dannatamente felici? Di imbattervi in una strada che porta chissà dove, e di morire dalla voglia di percorrerla? Vi è mai successo di inseguire un sogno con tutte le vostre forze, e avere paura che si realizzi davvero? È esattamente così che si sente Diana, appena sbarcata a Milano da una cittadina del Sud per iniziare la sua nuova vita. Nuova scuola, nuova casa ma, al suo fianco, gli amici di sempre, Luca e Arianna. Eppure, nella Città dei Grandi Sogni le cose non sono mai ciò che sembrano.

Best mates Karl and Abu are both 17 and live near King's Cross. It's 2011 and racial tensions are set to explode across London. Abu is infatuated with gorgeous classmate Nalini but dares not speak to her. Meanwhile, Karl is the target of the local "wannabe" thugs just for being different. When Karl finds out his father lives in Nigeria, he decides that Port Harcourt is the best place to escape the sound and fury of London, and connect with a Dad he's never known. Rejected on arrival, Karl befriends Nakale, an activist who wants to expose ecocide....

The heat is oppressive and storms are brewing in Brighton in the summer of 1982. Little Gold, a boyish girl on the brink of adolescence, is struggling with the reality of her broken family and a home descending into chaos. Her only refuge is the tree at the end of her garden. Into her fractured life steps elderly neighbour, Peggy Baxter. The connection between the two is instant, but just when it seems that Little Gold has found solace, outsiders appear who seek to take advantage of her frail family in the worst way possible.

Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada’s National Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badge follows the Murray family as they struggle with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After the death of her stepmother, Frances "Frankie" Murray returns to Calgary to help her father, Jimmy, and her sister, Bernadette, pay the mortgage on the family home. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest, old tensions are reignited.

Not every story has a happy ending. Since her brother's death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Mama Murakami has curled up inside a bottle, and Papa has exiled himself to the barn with the birds. Big sister Kathy tells stories to Egg so that the world might not seem so awful.

The art world falls in love with Dixie Stammers when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Her teenage son, Judas, is pathologically shy, and retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area. What he really longs for though is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends.

Two years after his partner, Francesco, died, 28-year-old Kevin Doyle is dusting off his one good suit jacket for yet another funeral, yet another loss in their close-knit group. They had all been young, beautiful, and living the best days of their lives, though they didn't know it. That was before New York City began to feel like a war zone, its horrors somehow invisible, and ignored by the rest of the world. Some people might insist that Francesco is in a better place now, but Kevin definitely isn't.  

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?

Meet the hapless Jeremy: a man in his late 50s, he scrapes together a living in Paris by writing soft-core pornography under the saucy guise of "Nathalie Cray". When his all-but-estranged sister tells him their father is on his deathbed, Jeremy reluctantly travels back to his parental home in the depths of the English countryside. Confronted with a life that he had always been eager to escape, his return marks the start of an emotionally fraught journey into the family's checkered past.

An honest story about recovery and coping with both past and present, framed by the meteoric rise and fall of the band Nirvana and the wide-reaching scope of the #metoo movement, Nirvana is Here explores issues of identity, race, sex, and family with both poignancy and unexpected humor. Deftly told intertwining stories with rich, real characters are reminiscent of the sensuality and haunting nostalgia of Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name blended with the raw emotion of Kurt Cobain's lyrics.

Raised as a boy in a grand but unhappy family in Nigeria, Otolorin Akinro escapes to boarding school knowing two things: she is truly a girl, and to stay safe, she must hide that truth. Away from the cruelty of her childhood home, Oto blooms even as she strives to be the best boy she can, finding true friendship and working hard to earn a scholarship to an American university, hoping someone out there might help her understand the secrets her body holds.

Conrad Aybinder is a boy with a secret; 16 and ready for anything. A chemistry genius, he has spent the summer on an independent-study project with his favorite teacher, Sammy Tampari. Sammy is also Conrad’s first love. But the first day of senior year, the students are informed that Mr. Tampari is dead. Rumors suggest an overdose. How can it be? Drugs are for unhappy people, Conrad is sure, not for people who have fallen in love.

At 19, almost 20, Ron Bancroft is newly out as transgender and finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, and unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that - even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender - he can live as a man. A real man. In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, and a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE. A sweet and subversive coming-of-age novel by award-winning memoirist and screenwriter Ariel Schrag. When Adam Freedman—a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California—goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful...