Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Coming of Age

Orphaned cousins Jane and Lucilla, both 19, receive the exciting news that their guardian is at last allowing them to leave boarding school. But their rosy future is thwarted when they find he has made some bad investments and fled, leaving them with a cottage in the English countryside and a modest bank account.  

Set in New Orleans at the close of the 19th century, The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier, who, while vacationing with her husband and their two sons, finds liberation from her prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires. At the coastal resort of Madame Lebrun, Edna struggles to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South.

Eleanor H. Porter’s most famous literary creation is Pollyanna, but she isn’t the only precocious young girl to spring from the author’s pen. Mary Marie Anderson describes herself as “a cross-current and a contradiction", the offspring of incompatible parents who couldn’t even agree about her name. When the two divorce when she is thirteen, Mary Marie is delighted since she’s always liked being different. None of the other girls have two homes and spend six months with each parent! Father will remain in their small town and mother will live in Boston with her family.

Mike is among Wodehouse's earliest adult novels, and reportedly remained the author's personal favorite. The story follows the adventures of cricketing prodigy Mike Jackson, first at the prestigious Wrykyn public school, where he strives to achieve the unprecedented feat of a place in the First Eleven in his freshman year, and later (when to his father's annoyance Mike's academic performance at Wrykyn fall rather short of his sporting achievements) at Sedleigh, a smaller school with little sporting reputation, where he first encounters the immaculate and unflappable Psmith....

After their mother’s probable suicide, Jazz and Olivia Moon struggle to move on with their lives. Olivia, an 18-year-old who can taste words and see sounds, blinds herself by staring at the sun, then decides to walk to the remote setting of her mother’s unfinished novel to resuscitate her hopes and dreams. Jazz, plagued by unresolved conflict with her mother and a hidden trove of her unsent letters, takes a job in a funeral home before being forced back into the role of her sister’s keeper.

Dawn of the Morning is the story of a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s. Having never known a loving home, she is sent away to school by her hard and unfeeling father and stepmother, and a marriage is arranged for her to a man she dislikes and fears.

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) that was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March - detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. This special edition celebrating the 150th year since publication includes excerpts from "Louisa May Alcott, Her Life, Letters, and Journals" and "Little Women" part one and two.

First published in 1869, Little Women is the story of four sisters growing up against the background of the American Civil War. Alcott wrote the book at the urging of the publisher, Thomas Niles, who was seeking a story about girls that would have popular appeal. Although it was commenced essentially as a children's book, it developed into something of a bildungsroman, which touches on more serious issues such as the difficulties faced by single-parent families, the death of a sibling, and fractured relationships.

This is Charles Dickens’s second novel and regarded as one of his best. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and titled; Oliver Twist, or; A Parish Boys Progress. As a book, it first appeared in 1838 in three volumes. The story follows the title character Oliver Twist, who, being born and raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life, runs away to nearby London. Here, he falls in with a gang of young thieves and pickpockets controlled by Fagin, an elderly criminal.

Anne has delayed her college ambitions to stay with Marilla at Green Gables after Matthew's passing. But when Marilla takes in a pair of twins, Anne must juggle her responsibilities at home, at Avonlea School, and at the local improvers' society. She rises to the occasion and meets a favorite author and new kindred spirits along the way.

Sixteen-year-old Effie Martin is in trouble. No one in her family understands her, some mean girls refuse to invite her to their picnic, her clothes are a mess, and she's mad at the world. Impulsively, she hops on her bike and soon finds herself in the middle of a drama where she saves the day. Her heroic act becomes a turning point in her life.

Three professional narrators, Mike Vendetti, Kathy Verduin, and Stephen Jay Cohen, lend their voices to what is considered by many to be one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novels, The Great Gatsby. Travel back with them to the Jazz Age, where the wealthy and entitled collide with pretenders and common citizens.  

Great Expectations is arguably Dickens' greatest achievement, and remains a joy from start to finish. Featuring many of his most memorable characters and scenes, the novel follows the narrator, Pip, as he grows from a frightened child of the marsh country, to be transmuted into a prosperous young gentleman by a mysterious benefactor; and the story explores themes of crime and punishment, guilt and innocence, revenge and reward, wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and good and evil.

Unwanted and unloved as a child, Natalie Parsons longs to escape from the moral restraints of her foster family and embark on a life of boozing and floozing at Edinburgh University. Her first-year geophysics course finds her rebelling against the idea that the universe, like herself, originated as a meaningless accident. She drifts ever deeper into drink, debt, and depravity until she hits a rock that sinks her in a life-threatening depression. Rescue comes through a friend who claims to know God, producing a dilemma that only a miracle can solve.

The story is told from the point of view of Pip, an orphan of humble origins who dreams of being a gentleman. From a chilling encounter with a convict when he was seven, through his coming of age and early adulthood, he tells of his "memorable days" and the "great changes" they wrought in him. Pip is apprenticed to kind-hearted Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, husband to his ill-tempered sister. On meeting the eccentric and reclusive Miss Havisham and her proud and haughty ward, the beautiful Estella, Pip becomes ashamed of his origins and hopes to one day better himself.

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, middle-aged siblings who live together in the fictional town of Avonlea on Prince Edward Island, decide to adopt a boy from an orphan asylum to help on their farm. But owing to a series of mishaps, the child who is delivered to their care is not a boy at all but a precocious girl of 11 named Anne Shirley. Although, as Marilla dryly informs her, "you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble", with pluck, imagination, and optimism, Anne flourishes at Green Gables.

Sally Carrol Happer is a popular 19-year-old girl living in Tarleton, Georgia. She is bored with her life in Tarleton, and, much to the chagrin of her local friends, she becomes engaged to Harry Bellamy, who is from a northern town. She brushes off the concerns of her friends and describes that she needs something "more in her life" and to see "things happen on a big scale".

Olivia Crawford has been through the ringer. All she wants is to start over without any complications or anyone figuring out her secrets. When her twin brother Finn convinces her to move back home and finish her degree at his school, it's just the push she needs to start over. Nathaniel Ford is the golden boy of SCU. He seems like he has it all - perfect family, awesome friends and fraternity brothers, and a few buildings on campus with his last name on them. But things aren't always what they seem.

Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost are two of Gene Stratton Porter's most famous novels. Set primarily in the Limberlost Swamp of Indiana, USA, Freckles follows the story of Freckles, a lame orphan whose innate character rises above his circumstances. A Girl of the Limberlost is the story of Elnora, blamed for her father's death by her mother, who nevertheless meets every challenge that comes her way with admirable resilience.