Showing titles in Coming of Age

Missouri native Allen Eskens' "stunning small-town mystery" (New York Times Book Review) is a necessary exploration of family, loyalty, and racial tension in America and "a coming-of-age book to rival some of the best, such as Ordinary Grace" (Library Journal, starred review). In a small...

With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a tiny nervous breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip to Ireland. Specifically, to the village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving. When Meg arrives, the people in town don’t just recognize her, they seem to know her. She quickly—reluctantly—realizes she has somehow slipped into an alternate reality.

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

Liam is living the dream. His senior year at college, and he's the big man on campus, the quarterback for the football team. Rumored to be drafted to the big leagues he's focused and determined. Eat, sleep, and breath football. Then he meets his little sister's roommate, and suddenly football is no longer his only focus.

“The Lack of Light is a novel that thrills you, the kind you can't put down. Nino Haratischwili grips you from the first page with an intensity that only great writers can achieve.” —Armando Lucas Correa, author of the internationally bestselling The German Girl “Readers will find [The...

The story of an unhappy little girl, her invalid cousin, and the healing power of friendship and love. Reading level: 4.8...

1932: Located on the banks of the Gilead River in Minnesota, Lincoln School is home to hundreds of Native American boys and girls who have been separated from their families. The only two white boys in the school are orphan brothers Odie and Albert, who, under the watchful eyes of the cruel superintendent Mrs. Brickman, are often in trouble for misdeeds both real and imagined. The two boys' best friend is Mose, a mute Native American who is also the strongest kid in school. And they find another ally in Cora Frost, a widowed teacher who is raising her little girl, Emmy, by herself.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER This "powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinching look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. With an afterword by the author and a new introduction by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. “A masterwork...

On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom. Lilly isn't allowed to explore the meadows around Blackwood Manor. She's never even ventured beyond her narrow room. Momma insists it's for Lilly's own protection, that people would be afraid if they saw her. But on this unforgettable night, Lilly is taken outside for the first time - and sold to the circus sideshow.

A father and daughter living in the remote Appalachian mountains must reckon with the ghosts of their past in Kimi Cunningham Grant's These Silent Woods, a mesmerizing audiobook of suspense. No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young...

They'll tell you I seduced them. Used my looks and body to lure them into my playground. They'll tell you I'm a sinner. A demon who held them captive with temptation and lust. They'll tell you I'm evil. A monster obsessed with the both of them. They'll tell you they made a deal with the devil. What they won't tell you...is how much they liked it.

Mordecai’s growing power and success have made him a threat, not just to the gods and their minions, but also to the king of Lothion. An unholy bargain has been struck to bring him to heel and increasingly it seems that victory may not be worth the price, not if the cost is measured in the blood of his family. Wizard, lord, husband, father, and now archmage...no man can balance so many roles without sacrificing something. Will the world be worth saving if it costs him the very reasons he has for living in it?

Ten years ago, Izzy Stone's mother fatally shot her father while he slept. Devastated by her mother's apparent insanity, Izzy, now 17, refuses to visit her in prison. But her new foster parents, employees at the local museum, have enlisted Izzy's help in cataloguing items at a long-shuttered state asylum. There, amid piles of abandoned belongings, Izzy discovers a stack of unopened letters, a decades-old journal, and a window into her own past.

Fox, JJ, Chase, and Maverick. The four names tattooed onto my heart more permanently than any of the ink on my skin. They don’t just live in this town anymore, they rule it. And the view here may be beautiful, but the sun, sea and sand hide dark secrets. The gangs. The lies. The violence. It all lurks beneath a veil so thin that once you’ve seen through it, you can never close your eyes to the truth again. But I don’t plan on closing my eyes. I have four devils set in my sights. And this dead girl no longer has anything to lose.

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s NO LONGER HUMAN narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

Hapless Nate Hester yearns for the safety and affection of a group. He sets off on a hitchhiking trip to escape bad parenting and the Vietnam draft. Nate soon longs to be off the road. A drug dealer befriends him and introduces him to the Hells Angels. The Angels introduce him to the wonders of drug use and free sex, but the effects wane, and Nate leaps from mania to depression.

When May’s mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by Aunty. However, their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn’t seem to want them. While Billy takes his own destructive path, May sets out to find her father and her Aboriginal identity. Her journey leads her from the Australian east coast to the far north, but it is the people she meets, not the destinations, that teach her what it is to belong.

Molly Webster has always followed the rules. After an ugly scandal tore apart her childhood and made her the focus of the media's harsh spotlight, she vowed to live an ordinary life. No fame. No impropriety. No pain. Then she meets Zachary Fox, a tattooed bad-boy rocker with a voice like whiskey and sin and a touch that could become an addiction.

Finn and Kaz are about to meet for the first time. Ten-year-old Finn, a quirky, sensitive boy who talks a lot and eats only at cafes with a five-star hygiene rating, is having a tough time at school and home. Outspoken Kaz, 59, who has an acerbic sense of humour and a heart of gold, is working at the café when Finn and his mum come in. They don't know it yet, but the second time they meet will be a moment which changes both of their lives forever....

In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement—when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin—in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for listeners of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.