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

Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past - and his role in another camper's death. As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation", Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer.

Lonely college student Minnie feels invisible until she stumbles upon HOURglass: America's new K-pop boyband obsession. Soon she is memorizing the lyrics to every song and staying up late to watch their livestreams, hoping that her favorite member, bad-boy Halo, will see her in the comments. On the other side of the screen, Halo is also becoming addicted to the adoration from his fans, using their love to paper over the cracks of the tragic past he is determined to keep hidden.

For Robert Carter, life in his coastal Maine hometown is comfortably predictable. But in 1976, on his first day of eighth grade, he meets Nathan Tilly, who changes everything. Nathan is confident, fearless, impetuous - and fascinated by kites and flying. Robert and Nathan's budding friendship is forged in the crucible of two family tragedies, and as the boys struggle to come to terms with loss, they take summer jobs at the local rundown amusement park.

Sami’s childhood is much like any other - an innocent blend of family and school, of friends and relations and pets (including stray cats and dogs and the turtle he keeps on the roof). But growing up in one of the largest cities in Syria, with his country at war with itself, means that nothing is really normal. And Sami’s hopes for a better future are ripped away when he is conscripted into the military and forced to train as a map maker.

Introvert Gina Mulley is determined to become a tattoo artist, and to find somewhere she belongs in her conventional Long Island town. But this is 1985, when tattooing is still a gritty, male-dominated fringe culture, and Gina’s whimsical style is far from the norm. Luck is on her side: Gina’s older brother Dominic owns a tattoo shop, and he reluctantly grants her one year to prove herself.

A heartrending, at times darkly comic but ultimately redemptive novel, Paolo Giordano’s The Human Body is an exploration of brotherhood and family, of modern war, and the wars we wage within ourselves. It is a novel that reminds us of what it means to be human. A platoon of young men and a single woman leave Italy for one of the most dangerous places on Earth. At their forward operating base in Afghanistan; this band of inexperienced soldiers navigates the irreversible journey from youth to adulthood.

Helen Clapp is a physics professor. She doesn't believe in pseudoscience or time travel and especially not in ghosts. So when she gets a missed call from Charlie, her closest friend from university with whom she hasn't spoken in over a year, Helen thinks there must be some mistake. Because Charlie died two days ago. Then when her young son, Jack, claims to have seen Charlie in their house just the other day, Helen begins to have doubts.

At 35, Mika Suzuki is struggling. She's been fired (again). Her last relationship went up in flames. Her fervently traditional mother is perpetually disappointed in her. And now, she's had a phone call from 16-year-old Penny Calvin. The baby she reluctantly gave up for adoption when she was just a teenager herself. Mika is desperate to meet her girl. But she barely feels like she can take care of herself. Is she ready to show Penny who her mother really is?

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.

The house is on Montpelier Parade: just across town, but it might as well be a different world. Working on the garden with his father one Saturday, Sonny is full of curiosity. Then the back door eases open, and she comes down the path towards him. Vera. Chance meetings become shy arrangements, and soon Sonny is in love for the first time. Casting off his lonely life of dreams and quiet violence for this new intoxicating encounter, he longs to know Vera, even to save her. But what is it that Vera isn't telling him?

It is summer 1956 when 15-year-old Bridget first meets Isabella. In their conservative Connecticut town, Isabella is a breath of fresh air. She is worldly, alluring and brazen: an enigma. When they receive an offer to study at the Academy in Italy, Bridget is thrilled. This is her ticket to Europe and - better still - a chance to spend nine whole months with her glamorous and unpredictable best friend. There, lodged in a convent of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, the two girls move towards a passionate but fragile intimacy.

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.

Entire cities disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but dust and rubble. When an alien race came to make Earth theirs, they brought with them a weapon we had no way to fight, a universe-altering force known as thelemity. It seemed nothing could stop it - until we discovered we could wield the power, too. Five hundred years later, the Earth is locked in a grinding war of attrition. The talented few capable of bending thelemity to their will are trained in elite military academies, destined for the front lines.

Raya is a lost soul, going through the motions of life without a dream of her own. One night, on her subway ride home, Raya's thoughts wander too far. She wakes on the Elsewhere Express, a magical train that offers its passengers a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging. On board, Raya meets a charming, handsome artist named Q and together they race to find their place on the train, through a boarding car carpeted in meadow grass and along a dining carriage where passengers picnic on lilypads.

Lucy Carmichael is jilted at the altar. But no matter. Her loving and kind family never liked her explorer fiancé anyway. Instead of moping or falling into her supportive family’s arms, however, Lucy abandons their suburban home. Heading for the country, she takes up a teaching position in the industrial town of Ravonsbridge. There, she finds solace in her work, in her new (rather gossipy) colleagues – and rediscovers her sensible young self. But if Lucy has, despite everything, kept her head – where lies her heart?

Yorkshire teacher Ellen Fenwick has never been abroad. But when her mother dies, this young woman finds herself taking a position as governess to an English girl in Florence in the summer of 1933. Little does Ellen realise how this girl, Juliet, and her family will claim her. For as the summer passes, Ellen falls so in love with Italy and her new home that she cannot bear to leave – even when her own hopes of love are cruelly thwarted.

On the eve of her first solo show, Ava is feeling defiant. The art gallery acolytes have insisted on writing “explanations” of her paintings for an accompanying catalog, but what do they know of her work? What do they know of her brother, Demetri, whose face echoes across every canvas? After all, Ava and Demetri have only ever had each other. Abandoned first by their mother, who drowned in the Long Island Sound, and then again by their father, who couldn’t see beyond his grief, each sibling has always been the other’s most ardent supporter.

From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia in 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. Estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, and their home in Bonaparte, Alabama, Ava is determined to give her son the chance of a better life. But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, Ava is swept off course by his charisma and his bold vision for racial justice. As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass and the radical group he has created, Toussaint begins to sense the danger and threat of violence simmering all around him.

Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.