Showing titles in Coming of Age

London, 1945. The capital is still reeling from the war. Fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his older sister Rachel are abandoned by their parents who leave the country on business, and are left in the dubious care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. Nathaniel is introduced to The Moth’s band of criminal misfits and is caught up in a series of teenage misadventures, from smuggling greyhounds for illegal dog racing to lovers’ trysts in abandoned buildings at night. But is this eccentric crew really what and who they claim to be? And most importantly, what happened to Nathaniel’s mother?

Enchantments run deep on the magical Isle of Cadence: gossip is carried by the wind, plaid shawls can be as strong as armour and the smallest cut of a knife can instil fathomless fear. The capricious spirits that live there find mirth in the lives of the humans who call the land home, but that mischief turns to malevolence as girls begin to go missing. Adaira, heiress of the East, knows the spirits only answer to a bard’s music, enticing them to return the missing girls. But there’s only one bard capable of drawing the spirits forth by song: her childhood enemy, Jack Tamerlaine.

Andy's story wasn't meant to turn out this way. Living out of a suitcase in his best friends' spare room, waiting for his career as a stand-up comedian to finally take off, he struggles to process the life-ruining end of his relationship with the only woman he's ever truly loved. As he tries to solve the seemingly unsolvable mystery of his broken relationship, he contends with career catastrophe, social media paranoia, a rapidly dwindling friendship group and the growing suspicion that, at 35, he really should have figured this all out by now.

My name is Katherine Parr. I’m thirty-one years old – already twice widowed. I love a man I can’t have. I’m to wed a man no one would want. He has cast aside two wives and watched another die in childbirth. Two more have had their heads struck from their bodies, on his order. What will become of me as Henry VIII’s sixth wife? I will have the king’s ear. With that comes power. But power means danger in the Tudor court.

When Sofie comes to stay with her grandmother in Stanthorpe, she knows little of Nonna Gia's past. In the heat of that 1984 summer, the two clash over Gia's strict Italian ways and superstitions, her chilli-laden spaghetti and the evasive silence surrounding Sofie's father, who died before she was born. Then Sofie learns Gia had an arranged marriage. From there, the past begins to reveal why no-one will talk of her father.

It's 11th September 2001. Lucy and Gabe meet in New York on a day that will change their lives - and the world - forever. As the city burns behind them, they kiss for the very first time.

Over the next 13 years, they are torn apart, then brought back together, time and time again. It's a journey of dreams, of desires, of jealousy, of forgiveness - and, above all, of love. As Lucy is faced with a devastating choice, she wonders whether their love is a matter of destiny or chance.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns, and the truth.

An epic generational story about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jenni Daiches's Somewhere Else explores today's most difficult and urgent questions, not least of which: how to find identity in displacement. An epic generational story about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Jenni Daiches's Somewhere Else explores today's most difficult and urgent questions, not least of which: how to find identity in displacement.

It is Beijing in the 1970s, and Lai lives with her parents, grandmother and younger brother in a small flat in a working-class area. Her grandmother is a formidable figure - no-nonsense and uncompromising, but loving towards her granddaughter - while her ageing beauty of a mother snipes at her father, a sunken figure who has taken refuge in his work. As she grows up, Lai comes to discern the realities of the country she lives is. But she also goes through what anyone goes through when young - the ebbs and flows of friendships; troubles and rewards; and the first steps and missteps in love.

After ten years of loyal service, Daisy Butterworth has been made redundant. Like any clever woman, she knows the cure to redundancy is a little too much wine and her best friend. Only the next morning, Daisy has more than a hangover...she has a whole new house—in France! Seeing this as an opportunity instead of a disaster, she’s excited about finally moving to France, just as she and her husband always dreamed of. However, Daisy is in for another surprise. Despite planning to move there for over 20 years, her husband never actually intended to go.

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

Sumire is in love with a woman 17 years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel. Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire. Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished....

Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty, a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American dream.

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out with friends at their local university drag night, Tom buys Ming a drink. Confident and witty, a charming young playwright, Ming is the perfect antidote to Tom's awkward energy, and their connection is instant. Tom finds himself deeply and desperately drawn into Ming's orbit, and on the cusp of graduation, he's already mapped out their future together. But, shortly after they move to London to start their next chapter, Ming announces her intention to transition.

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, The Neapolitan Novels is an exploration of the friendship between Lila and Lena, two bright young girls who grew up in the tough, rough streets of postwar Naples. This is no normal friendship; it's a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys - and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime. These four full-cast BBC adaptations bring the streets of Naples vividly to life.

All Ellie Robertson has wanted to be since childhood is a painter: after all, that’s the easiest way to speak without actually having to say anything. But now she’s turning thirty, has had a major career win, and is only just realising that she might have let some minor things slide. Like, for instance, working out how to love another human being. So Ellie decides to do what any normal person would do: paint a portrait of each of her exes, from the childhood crush to the woman she may or may not still be madly in love with.

Lawrence is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is 10, an experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the aftermath. As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it?

For all her life, Till, now twenty-three, has lived in the shadow of the abduction of a childhood friend, and her tormented half-wondering about whether she might have been able to stop it. Finally, at the age of twenty-three, Till flees her past and the hovering presence of her fearful parents. In Wirowie, a town that's on its knees, she stops and slowly begins creating a new home, rebuilding an abandoned railway station. But there is danger here too.

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.

Nuri is a beekeeper, his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain.