Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Coming of Age

Isla Larsen Sanchez's life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her great-aunt each summer, like a piece of forgotten luggage. It is only when Isla turns eighteen, and her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies, that Isla discovers she has a gift. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

Rodeo cowboy Joe Willie Wolfchild, riding an explosive bull called See Four and moments away from becoming World Champion, suffers a devastating accident. His parents and grandparents use all their native wisdom to ease him out of his subsequent bitter depression, but without success. Meanwhile, in a distant city, a troubled young kid named Aiden plans a holdup that goes wrong and lands himself in jail.

The acclaimed novel of girlhood, friendship, and sexuality set in the bohemian Greenwich Village of 1970, with a new introduction by Jessica Anya Blau Fourteen-year-old Rainey Royal—fierce, gifted, and dangerously magnetic—lives in a once-elegant, now-crumbling townhouse with her cultish...

It’s the summer of 1982 and fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain is the only one left at camp. The place is a ghost town by the time her mother Val finally shows up six hours late—stoned and radiant—in a Ford pickup driven by Borislav, her new young Russian lover. Assuming she is headed home to her air-conditioned Upper West Side apartment, Swanna and her lovable younger brother Madding are instead dragged to Vermont—to an artist colony where kids are not welcome and they are forced to sleep in the back of the truck, while Val is cozy inside the house with the Russian.

When Aden’s 8-year-old daughter asks him this one morning in Paris, he is taken aback. The question is innocent, but the answer is not so simple. Unable to resist Béa’s inquisitive spirit, he moves silkily between memories of his childhood: from his silent, mysterious mother and the shanty roofs of his neighborhood to the malicious attack that changed his life forever and the ensuing struggle that made him a man.

Jenny is thirteen when an epic dust storm rolls into her central California town in December 1977. Bedridden after contracting a life-threatening illness in the storm and suffering a shocking loss, Jenny realizes she will never be cared for by the mother who both neglects and terrifies her or the father who allows it. She relies on her cousin, Heather, who has the loving home Jenny longs for; her beloved great-uncle, Gino, the last link between generations; her best friend, Henry, a free spirit with whom she shares an inexplicable bond; and baseball star, Billy, who becomes her first love.

Jillian (Jewels) Whitman lives with her mistakes and tries to move past the biggest one of her life—Dillon Bleu—rocker and once best friend. After saying goodbye to the lakeside trailer park of his youth, Dillon sets out to make something of himself only to discover all he needs is his Jewel. After hitting it big in the music industry, Dillon heads back to ask for a second chance. Only … nothing is ever as easy as it seems …

As students at university of Makhanda, South Africa during the #RUReferenceList campaign, Langa and her lover Khwezi have a passionate and complex relationship. Puzzling gaps in her memory haunt Langa, yet her dreams are vivid with colors and symbols that hint at a nightmare of forgotten violations and losses. So many secrets—and Langa has had enough of secrets and silences. Who can she turn to? Her mother? Her grandmother? Khwezi? Or herself?

The Mockingbird family has always lived peacefully in Jubilee, Kentucky, despite the divisions that mark their small town. Until the tense summer of 1963, when their youngest child, Isaac, falls gravely ill. Middle sister Grace, nearly fourteen, is determined to do whatever it takes to save her little brother. With her father and mother away at the hospital, Grace is left under the loving but inexperienced eye of her aunt June, with little to do but wait and worry. Inspired by a young teacher’s mission for change, she begins to flirt with danger—and with a gifted boy named Golden.

As a twelve-year-old escaping a disordered and unhappy home and parents who loved hard but couldn’t make it work, Travis left the Midwest to spend a summer with his grandparents in the Deep South. There he met Delia, the love of his life, who, tragically, was beyond his reach for two reasons—she was his aunt and she was sixteen years old. That summer made Travis guilty of crimes discovered and undiscovered. For his public wrongs, he did time, six years in a Nebraska reform school. For his undiscovered wrongs, he suffers mightily and wants desperately to be shriven.

Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions. Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life. 

Mel Ellis knows that her eating disorder is ruining her life. But she can't bring herself to go to rehab so someone else can fix her mess. Broken and empty in more ways than one, Mel makes one last-ditch effort to make hers a story worth telling. She will walk her own road to recovery along the lesser-known trails of the North American wilderness. Though she is physically and mentally unprepared to face the difficulties that lay ahead, she sets off on foot from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and heads toward Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State.

In Masks, Mara Holdfast's life changed forever. As the daughter of the Autarch’s Master Maskmaker, she had a clearly defined future: a quiet, ordered life in the capital, making Masks with her father and doing work important to the ruling Autarch. But when her Mask, specially made by her own father, cracked and fell to pieces during her Masking ceremony, Mara was exiled from everything she once knew.Now she has become part of an underground rebellion, rejecting the unjust rules of a Masked society.

Coming-of-age meets coming-of-middle-age in this tender exploration of what it means to reinvent yourself. A teenage girl runs away from a life of boredom and poverty, with dreams of becoming a smoke jumper. A middle-aged mother escapes to the mountains to explore her artistic side. Thanks to a snowstorm, Ivy and Mary Ellen find themselves trapped together in an isolated home in the Poconos. Now lying to each other, and themselves, they must confront what kind of people they want to be and - when a near-fatal accident forces them to face the truth - who they really are. 

Can she piece together a dream on a shoestring? As new owner of the falling-apart family homestead in West Texas, Dee Bennett is wrangling ways to earn a living, mend fences with farm and family, and manifest her dreams as a writer - all while nurturing the budding relationship with her beau, outdoorsy photographer Max Miller. But when a drop-dead-gorgeous, high-powered handler for a candidate in a key statewide election blows into Claxton, rivalries bigger than politics and football develop.

Vincent Appleton smiles at his daughters, raises a gun, and blows off his head. For the Appleton sisters, life had unraveled many times before. This time it explodes. Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls. With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.

Reliance, Illinois tells the story of a young woman faced with choices that will alter the course of her own future, and offers a brilliant window into American life during a period of tumultuous change. Illinois, 1874: With a birthmark covering half her face, 13-year-old Madelyn Branch is accustomed to cold and awkward greetings, and expects no less in the struggling town of Reliance. After all, her mother, Rebecca, was careful not to mention a daughter in the Matrimonial Times ad that brought them there.

A nameless 15-year-old runs away to Los Angeles, seeking life beyond the harsh constraints of her evangelical upbringing. She is the narrative of her passage, from her escape on a bus through her quiet, determined progress across the city's unforgiving terrain. The journey takes her into and around the lives of Angelinos from all walks....

Loreena Picket is a young blind woman with a gift. In the rare moments when she's not wearing her gloves, if she takes your hand, she travels with you to your own personal afterlife. Loreena will return - you won't. Loreena's minister uncle says her power is a gift from God, and together they help terminally ill people die peacefully. Still, Loreena is conflicted, because she's seen the afterlife, and it's nothing like her uncle says it is.

The Wild Things - based very loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze - is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can't control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: He wears a wolf suit, bites his mom, and can't always control his outbursts.