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

Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it's a lazy nickname, but he didn't have much say in the matter.) He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day...unless he gets distracted. He's a virgin, mostly because he's no good at talking to girls.

Even though the cancer should be far behind him, Jeffrey still worries that it will return. He’s got normal teen stuff to deal with, too - friends, parents, girls, school. Normally, he’d ask his older brother, Steven, for advice. But Steven, always the trusty, responsible one, is finally rebelling and has taken off to Africa to join a drumming circle and “find himself”. Jeffrey feels abandoned. Meanwhile, his best friend, Tad, is hatching some kind of secretive, crazy plan involving eighth-grade graduation.....

For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day is an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust - always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the secret sadness and generosity to be found on a lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. Then he joins up with a carnival and becomes a grunt, running a ride and shilling for the geek show. He’s living the hard carny life and beginning to see the world through carny eyes. Until her.

Growing up in a world of wealth and pastel-tinted entitlement, 15-year-old Carly has always relied on the constancy - and authenticity - f her sister, Anna. But when 14-year-old Anna turns plastic-perfect-pretty over the course of a single summer, everything starts to change. And there are boys involved, complicating things as boys always do.

Pondering math problems is Esther Ainsworth’s obsession. If only life’s puzzles required logic. Her stepfather’s solution? Avoidance. He’s exiled the family to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to erase a big secret from Esther’s past. So much for the truth. Now for the consequences: an empty swimming pool, a water-sucking cactus outside her window, a goldfish rescued from a church festival, and Esther’s thirst for something real.

Everyone eventually leaves Wren Plumley. First it was her mother, then her best friend, and then her sister. Now living with only her cop father and her upended dreams, Wren feels stranded, like a songbird falling in a storm. When Wilder, a sickly housebound teen, moves in next door, Wren finally finds what she’s always wanted - a person who can’t leave. But a chance meeting with Luca, the talkative, crush-worthy boy in her driver’s ed class, has Wren wondering if maybe she’s too quick to push people away.

When seventeen-year-old aspiring designer Tahira Janmohammad’s coveted fashion internship falls through, her parents have a Plan B. Tahira will work in her aunt’s boutique in the small town of Bakewell, the flower capital of Ontario. It’s only for the summer, and she’ll get the experience she needs for her college application. Plus her best friend is coming along. It won’t be that bad. But she just can’t deal with Rowan Johnston, the rude, totally obsessive garden-nerd next door with frayed cutoffs and terrible shoes. Not to mention his sharp jawline and soft lips.

What’s the problem? Sixteen-year-old Filipino American Angelo Rivera will tell you flat out. Life sucks. He’s been uprooted from his San Diego home to a boring landlocked town in the middle of nowhere. Behind him, ocean waves, his girlfriend, and the biggest skateboarding competition on the California coast. Ahead, flipping burgers at his parents’ new diner and, as the only Asian in his all-white school, being trolled as “brown boy” by small-minded, thick-necked jocks. Resigned to being an outcast, Angelo isn’t alone.

Grace Williams has her future all mapped out. A high school senior in her beloved state of Texas, Grace plans to move to New York City after graduation to study at Barnard College, and maybe, someday, win a Nobel Prize in biology. When she's asked to tutor Jack Nelson, the star baseball player who's flunking bio, she thinks it'll be just another activity to list on her college application. Studying turns to flirting, flirting becomes secret hookups, and despite her expertise in bio, Grace gets pregnant.