Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Coming of Age

Nathan’s used to being alone. Drifting from town to town following his salesman father, he seeks solace in his studies when he can’t find understanding in his own home; his father is abusive and an alcoholic and his mother would rather disappear into the background than protect him. Enter Roy. The older boy next door might have a girlfriend at school and at church, but there’s no question that they’re drawn to one another, and the two quickly become entangled in a covert relationship.

It's summer, 1984, in blue-collar Swaffham, Massachusetts. Mel is thirteen, drinking a Slush Puppie at the drugstore, when she hears a voice, ‘deep and movie-star dramatic, like Lauren Bacall': Sylvia. What follows is a story of transgender awakening. Sylvia's shameless swagger and tough-girl trans femininity is an affront to the Swaffham locals, and her presence triggers hatred and, ultimately, violence. But it is also a catalyst for Mel. Through her friendship with Sylvia, Mel comes to realize that not only is there a world beyond Swaffham, there are other ways of being.

At a meatpacking facility in Missouri, Dee-Dee and her coworkers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift. The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee's more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.

Nerdy and shy, scholarship student Daniel de La Luna arrives at college nervous to meet his golden-haired, athletic roommate, whose Facebook photos depict a boy just like those who made Daniel's school years hell. Sam Morris is not what he had imagined, though. As the two settle into college life they drink tequila under the stars, go on long runs through snow-covered hills, explore freshman nightlife, and inch closer until they find themselves in love.

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, best-selling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever.

One afternoon, a mother opens her front door to find the length of her son's body stretched out on the veranda, swaddled in akwete material, his head on her welcome mat. The Death of Vivek Oji transports us to the day of Vivek's birth, the day his grandmother Ahunna died. It is the story of an over protective mother and a distant father and the heart-wrenching tale of one family's struggle to understand their child, just as Vivek learns to recognise himself.

From the author of the prize-winning title The White Tiger comes a compelling and entertaining coming-of-age story. Manjunath Kumar is 14. He knows he is good at cricket - if not as good as his elder brother, Radha. He knows that he fears and resents his domineering and cricket-obsessed father, admires his brilliantly talented sibling and is fascinated by the world of CSI and by curious and interesting scientific facts. But there are many things, about himself and about the world, that he doesn't know.

In the Black Country in the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has moved to Britain with his wife to secure a brighter future for themselves and their children. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality.

At a time when coming out of the closet is chic, it is certainly not that way for Brad Archer. After a traumatic sexual encounter in high school, Brad, now in college, is having trouble with romantic relationships. He has dates with girls that fail miserably and continues to have horrific nightmares about both his past and the fears for his future.

Was Simon über Blue weiß: Er ist witzig, sehr weise, aber auch ein bisschen schüchtern. Und ganz schön verwirrend. Was Simon nicht über Blue weiß: WER er ist. Die beiden gehen auf dieselbe Schule und schon seit Monaten tauschen sie E-Mails aus, in denen sie sich die intimsten Dinge gestehen. Simon spürt, dass er sich langsam, aber sicher in Blue verliebt, doch der ist noch nicht bereit, sich mit Simon zu treffen. Dann fällt eine der E-Mails in falsche Hände - und plötzlich steht Simons Leben Kopf.

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

The 1960s brought Seth and Payton all they'd fantasized about—perfect friendships, a successful four-man band, and most importantly, each other. Together they embarked on a tour that brought them stimulating highs and shattering lows, and they prospered and suffered in one another's arms. The two men carried each other and carried a group that created both a history and a future for rock. But, at some point, their music blurred with the news of their love, and the world was faced with the choice to embrace its heroes or revert back to its deep-rooted prejudices.

At 37, Stevie Green has had it with binge drinking and sleeping with strange men. She’s confused about her sexuality and her purpose in life. When her mother asks her to return to her hometown of La Jolla to help her move into a new house, she’s desperate enough to say yes. The move goes so well that Stevie decides to start her own decluttering business. She stops drinking. She hires her formerly estranged sister, Bonnie, to be her business partner. Things are better than ever - except for the complicated past that Stevie can’t seem to outrun.

Michael Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even before his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in American fiction.

Moving between Ireland, Scotland and London, Something About Her is a story about the fragility and transformative power of first love. With vivid insight and tenderness, it exposes the fear, hope, and longing that can consume us, particularly when there’s so much you still don’t know about love, about life, and about yourself.

Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticut’s renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher, he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.

Marguerite Demers is 24 when she leaves Paris for the sleepy southern village of Saint-Sulpice, to take up a job as a live-in nurse. Her charge is Jerome Lanvier, once one of the most powerful men in the village, and now dying alone in his large and secluded house, surrounded by rambling gardens. Manipulative and tyrannical, Jerome has scared away all his previous nurses.

Unprecedented Times captures the beauty, frustration, love, and pain that exists in relationships between best friends, between lovers, between mothers and daughters, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan’s fresh, arresting novel captures the excitement and the terror of modern young adulthood through the eyes of an unforgettable, flawed, and lovable narrator.

Sofie Muller can make you into a better writer. That's why Alice and Walt are desperate to be in her creative writing class. Alice wants it. She wants Sofie's hand guiding hers to greatness, then the book deal, then the prizes and the plaudits. Still, there is gossip. Sofie will kill your darlings. Sofie will drive you too hard. Sofie's boundary-pushing is not just professional, it is personal. By the time Alice realizes the rumors may be true, is it too late to wriggle free? And if not, is it worth it to get what she always dreamed of?

Charli has finished art school and now has no idea what to do with her life. She’s broke, disillusioned and her flatmates hate her. One night at a bar in Soho, however, everything changes when she first encounters the charismatic musician Alexander Geist. Androgynous, glamorously handsome, mysterious and just a little sinister, he feels something like a soul mate; and so when he heads off to Berlin, Charli follows.