Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Coming of Age

Monica Murphy goes back to Lancaster Prep with a new generation of Lancasters, kicking it off with the daughter of Crew and Wren from the BookTok sensation A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime.

Our protagonist always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. But a couple of years on from earning a fancy PhD, she’s still broke, single and stuck in a job going nowhere. One option remains: marry rich. Her summer becomes a whirlwind of dating: martinis with a lazy heir, board games with a butch producer and a Venmo request from a ‘socialist’ trust-fund babe. However, when some unexpected and tragic news takes her – and her project – to Tehran she is forced to ask and answer some overdue questions about family, connection and, terrifyingly, her own purpose.

Keely feels alone in the world – grief consumes her, she wants to escape it, to take both her father's and her own pain away. She knows that solace lies in the act of loving and being loved but, struggling in ever-deepening waters, she doesn't know how to find it. Finn has been devastated too. As a young boy, growing up with his grandparents, he feels neglected by those meant to care for him most. With no real friends to turn to, he cannot find the vocabulary to deal with the loneliness and heartache that haunt him.

Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize. They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in inexorable ways. Under the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, begins to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's violence, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his ever-changing status as a Muslim in America.

Dot Watson has lost her way. Twelve years ago, her life veered off course and the guilt over what happened still haunts her. Before then she was living in Paris, forging an exciting career, now her time is spent visiting her mother's care home, fielding interfering calls from her sister and working at the London Transport Lost Property office, diligently cataloguing items as misplaced as herself. But when elderly Mr Appleby arrives in search of his late wife's purse, his grief stirs something in Dot. Determined to help, she sets off on a mission.

Penguin Classics presents Charles Dickens' epic Bleak House, adapted for downloadable audiobook and read by Ronald Pickup and Beatnie Edney.As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people.

K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is 11, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

Rachel has been in love with Alistair since she was seventeen. Even though she hasn't seen him for sixteen years and she's now married to someone else. Even though she was a teenager when they met. Even though he is twenty years older than her. She's found it impossible to forget their summer together on a remote, sun-trapped Greek island. Until now. When Rachel unexpectedly reconnects with a girl that she knew back then, she is forced to re-examine her memories of that golden summer and confront the truth about her relationship with Alistair.

January 1942. With female conscription now in place, the spitfire production line at the Bell Works Factory is busier than ever. When sisters Val and Kay arrive, singers who bring glamour as well as talent, they are soon entertaining their co-workers after long shifts on the factory floor. Audrey is delighted to have caught the eye of a new male supervisor. But is he all that he seems? With romance, heartbreak, painful goodbyes as well as joyful reconciliations all around, one thing is for sure – the women pull together to keep the spirits up of one and all and do their bit for the war.

Most nights, you’ll find Alison Hunter at The Venue, the kind of sweaty Nashville spot that’s on the circuit for bands like Bon Iver and Death Cab. Sounds glamorous—but not for Al, who stamps hands at the door with Julien, the quiet coworker who treats her like a little sister. When she can sneak off, she bums drinks from the tattooed bartender and watches the bands, wondering if she’ll ever finish a song of her own after her disastrous attempt to play in public.

It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people . . . even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.

Ginny Murphy is a total guy's girl. She's always found friendships with boys easier to form and keep drama-free - as long as they don't fall for her, and she doesn't fall for them. She and her best guy friends have stuck to that. But then she meets Adrian Silvas, the only one who's ever made her crave more, and Ginny begins to question her own rules. Piece by piece, Ginny and Adrian begin to fall into something intoxicating, something dangerous.

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.

Eliza has a full house! When her three children grew up and moved out, she downsized to a smaller property...but now they're all back. Every room in the house is taken and Eliza finds herself sharing her bed with her eldest daughter and her daughter's pug. Combined with the online course she's trying to finish, plus her job to fit in, there just isn't the peace and quiet that Eliza needs.

Ranging from the ragtime era to small-town America in the '70s, Searching for Caleb is a moving quest for a family's deepest roots - and a haunting story of growing up and breaking away, acceptance and rebellion.

It’s summer and a young man walks through the gates of a luxurious mansion in the south of France. At the dinner table, the Blakes are waiting for him: Annie, the family matriarch and world-famous singer, her inscrutable husband David and their children, Dot, aloof and rebellious, Lily, the man’s carefree university friend, and their enigmatic older brother Felix. Between sun-drenched days spent lounging by the pool and nights blurring into endless, opulent parties far from the reality of life in London, a restless attraction grows between Felix and the man.

In the grip of existential malaise, 25-year-old Daphne moves to Berlin for a fresh start. Far from resolving her quarter-life crisis, things take a turn for the worse. Because Daphne doesn't just have to navigate all the archetypal experiences of an outsider in the big city—acquiring friends and lovers, grappling with the language and a whole new way of life. A series of mysterious and troubling events are in motion—starting with a brick hurled through her bedroom window in the dead of night—and a further unravelling ensues.

Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there's an accident, and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered, their mother can't stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt: how do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel? As C grows older, she relives and retells her story, and she sees her brother everywhere: in cafes, airplane aisles, subway cars.

Back in 2004, The Daydreams had it all: a cast of innocent-seeming teenagers acting and singing their hearts out, amazing ratings, and a will-they-or-won’t-they romance that steamed up fan fiction forums. Then, during the live season two finale, it all imploded, leaving everyone scrambling to understand why. Afterward, the four stars went down very different paths. Now the fans are demanding a reunion special. The stars all have private reasons to come back. But as they tentatively rediscover the magic of the original show, old secrets threaten to resurface