Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Coming of Age

Stuck spending the summer with his screwed-up family, Gabriel Walker is bored out of his mind and looking for an adventure. And he seems to find it with the hot girl who lives next door. The attraction between them is instant and electric. Soon they're spending every stolen minute together. Talk about the perfect summer fling.

In 1951, the second year of the Korean War, a studious, law-abiding, and intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, begins his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees on every corner for his beloved boy.

Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle-aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular 11-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

Newly broke girl Alexandria Asher just wants to live a normal life. After her parents are sent to prison on embezzlement charges, she enrolls in college under her mother's maiden name and tries her best to pretend she's someone else. Tristan Prescott is everything Alex is trying to avoid. A seemingly egotistical, lazy, rich jerk, she dumps her beer on his head when he comes on to her one night at a party. This only spurs Tristan into action. He loves nothing more than a challenge.

Glass Ferry, Kentucky, is bourbon country. Whiskey has been a way of life for generations, enabling families to provide and survive even in the darkest times. Flannery Butler's daddy, Beauregard "Honey Bee" Butler, entrusted her with his recipes before he passed on, swearing her to secrecy. But Flannery is harboring other secrets too, about her twin sister Patsy, older by eight minutes and pretty in a way Flannery knows she'll never be. Then comes the prom night when Patsy - wearing a yellow chiffon dress and the family pearls - disappears along with her date.

Cursed, numb, rejected, scorned, wicked, sinister, dark, and twisted...this is Tex Campisi's legacy. He killed his father in cold blood and lost his soul right along with him. He craves war more than peace, and he's about to take his place in history as the youngest capo dei capi in the Cosa Nostra - that is until someone stops him, saves him from himself. But the only person able to do that is Tex's best friend's sister, Mo Abandonato, and she just ripped his heart out and asked him to hold it in his hands while she put bullets through it.

When Teresa was a little girl, she dreamed of dark-eyed, fearless heroes on white horses who would sweep her away. But now, as the grown-up Teresa negotiates life and love, she begins to understand that fairytales don't always come true.

Decades after its original publication, James Agee’s last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man’s death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.

Sydney Walker's new job is perfect. As the live-in nanny to the most famous quarterback in the NFL and his beautiful wife, she couldn't have it any better. Their kids are adorable. Her bosses are more than generous. Plus, there are hot football players at the house all the time. Life can't get much better than this. Until her life turns into an absolute nightmare. The media is abuzz with rumors that she and her boss, Drew Callahan, are having a torrid affair.

Alissa never believed in magic. But then she went to the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers once learned magic from enigmatic Masters. Under the tutelage of the last surviving Master, Alissa discovered that she had inherited her father’s magical ability.

He was my best friend...until he became my enemy, all within the span of one night. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The rapid fire of gunshots became the soundtrack to my life. This is the Mafia. Lines are blurred. Choices are never black and white. And the life you thought you knew is one giant lie. He was dead. I didn't want his life to be in vain, so I tried to make something of myself. Tried and failed. Now he's back. Alive. And he wants me. Nobody ever said the Mafia played fair.

Joyce loves Luca. Luca loves Joyce. Frank loves his family and will do anything to protect it, even if it means taking away his brother's reason for existing. Falling takes only one step, one movement of the chess piece, and in Joyce's fall she took more than just one heart with her. Go back to the beginning, where the drama of the Elect all starts. Go back to the first part of the story, where true love tried to conquer all. Where true love failed.

In the heyday of the 1970s underground, Bobby DeSoto and Mary Whittaker - passionate, idealistic, and in love - design a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see each other again. Now it is the 1990s. Mary lives in the suburbs with her 15-year-old son, who spends hours immersed in the music of his mother's generation.

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy - "Zits" - who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful, swift prose, Flight follows the troubled teenager as he learns that violence is not the answer.

In his tantalizing debut novel, Paradise Salvage, at once a taut thriller and a lyrical coming-of-age story, John Fusco marvelously traces the unforgettable trajectory of 12-year-old Nunzio Paradiso's last summer of innocence.

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, 20-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer - his "Keltjin potatoes" are justifiably famous - has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

Korea's brightest literary star sets this complex and nuanced coming-of-age story against the backdrop of Korea's industrial sweatshops of the 1970s and takes on the extreme exploitation, oppression, and urbanization that helped catapult Korea's economy out of the ashes of war. But it was girls like Shin's heroine who formed the bottom of Seoul's rapidly changing social hierarchy, forgotten and ignored.

Mary and Eddie are meant for each other - but love is no guarantee, not in these suburbs. Like all children, they exist in an eternal present; time is imminent, and the adults of the street live in their assorted houses like numbers on a clock. Meanwhile, ominous rumors circulate, and the increasing agitation of the neighbors points to a future in which all will be lost. Soon a sorcerer's car will speed down Mary's street, and as past and future fold into each other, the resonant parenthesis of her girlhood will close forever. Beyond is adulthood.

Life becomes more complicated than usual for LAPD Captain Josie Corsino after she chairs a disciplinary board that recommends firing a five-year police officer with a poor performance record and a history of irrational behavior. During his board of rights, the officer swears vengeance against her and anyone he believes is responsible for ruining his life and career.