Showing titles in Coming of Age

Ray Shepard is a wealthy architect who has mystified his friends by marrying Evelyn, a woman who works at a nail salon. Evelyn, in turn, hides a secret past about her former life in the circus, her ex-husband's mysterious death, and the colorful tattoos she carefully conceals under her clothes. When Evelyn starts to cave under the pressure of living in Ray's rarified world, she suggests they take in Ingrid, a 16-year-old girl with blue hair, a pet iguana, and no place to stay for the summer.

Winner of the 2017 Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, Like Wings, Your Hands is both a philosophical novel and a coming-of-age story, exploring a mother-son relationship in the context of disability and interdependence....

In Grosse Pointe, Michigan the idle rich run wild among one another. The Knights are part of the big four in terms of the US automotive industry. The Fitzpatrick’s are extremely wealthy for a number of things...Beautiful, rich, and dysfunctional. Come, see how the other half live!

If There's a Heaven Above takes the listener on a tour of the Southern California demi-monde Goth scene of the mid-1980s, as seen through the eyes of club-kid, Matt. The novel combines innocence with experience, sex and drugs, Love and Rockets, with just the right touch of poetry. It is a thrilling ride along the freeways and turntables of that era: when AIDS was new, Reagan was King, and hope was a wounded kitten, cared for by the creatures of the night.

Tijabab [TEE-juh-baab] is a cute, little, genderless bunny who survives various encounters with fear and grows up to find Truth, Forgiveness, and Freedom.

For two decades Tyler Gibbons has been keeping a secret from his family. At the tender age of 16, Tyler embarks on a student exchange program. Sent to the Andean city of Ambato, Ecuador, he finds daily adventure as he tries to fit in at school, connect with his host family, and navigate through a world of beaches, volcanoes, and jungles. But tucked deep inside this year are events so profound, so unexpected, they forever shape the man he will become. Now, 25 years later, his mother pulls these soaring tales from her son, exposing, for the first time, the source of a deep unhappiness.

After a string of sexual conquests, she is determined to figure out why the intense romantic connections she's spent her life chasing have left her emotionally high and dry. As Natalie sifts through her past and her present, she confronts her complicated feelings about her plus-sized figure, her bisexuality, and her thwarted career in fashion design.

A heartbroken and humiliated Ricky Graves took the life of a classmate and himself. Five months later, the sleepy community is still in shock and mourning. Ricky's sister, Alyssa, returns to confront her shattered, withdrawn mother and her guilt over the brother she left adrift. Mark McVitry, the lone survivor of the deadly outburst sparked by his own cruelty, is tormented by visions of Ricky's vengeful spirit. Ricky's surrogate older brother, Corky Meeks, grapples with doubts about the fragile boy he tried to protect but may have doomed instead.

A former star and high school standout, first-year student, Kennedy, is quickly humbled by her new surroundings. Classes, team politics, and even simple friendships are difficult to pace, let alone master. Initially, she grins and bears it, mostly because that is what the ultraconservative college leadership encourages. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Besides, new obstacles give Kennedy something to focus on other than the cute girls sitting in her lectures, sporting spandex at practice, and moving in right next door.

Any Ol' Jack is a 1999 novel by Jack Dexter. The book focuses on the events in the life of a ninth grader living in New Jersey and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly a 12th grader named Kyle whom he meets in an AOL gay chat room.

In Metes and Bounds, surf, sand, and sex meet in the macho world of construction workers. For narrator Matt, "the greatest comfort of surfing comes in the sureness and instinct." Matt is not just coming of age, he's coming out, and in the sun-bleached world of the North Carolina beaches his burgeoning sexuality can toss as many curves as a wave. Through his longings and self-discovery, Matt knows he cannot let others triumph over being the man he knows to be.

A never-ending journey awaits you along a Mobius strip that runs the circulatory system from flushed head to rapid heart, along asphalt lanes stinking of gasoline fumes and vulcanized rubber. Join Fields's feral boys, captivating Peter Pans in flight from detestable home life, school life, everyday life. Along the way, you'll pick up passengers, hitchhikers runaways plotting wicked larks, stay-at-homes longing for a nudge, grownups ready to be bent to a boy's whims.

It's the summer after college graduation, and three best friends must navigate the real world for the first time. Join Erick, Rhys, and Joey, as they spend the first summer after graduation trying to discover who they are outside of school, while not losing themselves. Along with their friends, the boys experience a summer full of joy, heartbreak, and humor on a journey that will test the bonds of friendship.

Dee Dee DeMarco's brother, Alex, was funny, free-spirited and creative. He was also gay. Tormented by bullies, Alex killed himself on his 15th birthday. Two years later, and now in college, Dee Dee believes getting a summer job working with a college-prep program for disadvantaged high school students is a stroke of luck, until she discovers that the guy assigned to co-lead her group is Cameron Connelly, a star basketball player and one of the bullies who tormented her brother to death.

Teenage Justin's summer is suddenly made even hotter by the appearance of a mysterious and very handsome young artist wearing a leopard print bathing suit that sparks his imagination and his heart. Can his dreams of the enticing stranger become reality? Written in a vivid and poetic style, colorfully describes this story of a gay youth's infatuation, fantasy, longing and love.

This is not a hair book. It's a dark comedy of a spiritual misfit, a child with a dream born into the wrong town. Religious cults, corporate cults, and insane clients - Francis can't catch a break. Francis has observed his own inability to fit in since birth, and his decision to be a professional cosmetologist only exacerbates his innate oddness.

Written in an urban vernacular that’s electrifying and intimate, On the Come Up introduces a heroine whose voice is irrepressible, dynamic, and unstintingly honest. Thirteen-year-old AnnMarie Walker dreams of a world beyond Far Rockaway, where the sway of the neighborhood keeps her tied to old ideas about success. While attending a school for pregnant teens, AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Astonishingly, improbably, and four months before she’s due to give birth - she lands a lead role.

In this collection, Catherine Lundoff, D. L. King, Cheyenne Blue, Kristina Wright, Jean Roberta, and 15 other writers offer up no-holds-barred, all-holds-hot tales of the highs and lows and kinky twists of first times. Coeds acting out for Girls Gone Wild get even wilder once the cameraman goes home. A lonely businesswoman discovers how far and hard her young chauffeur can drive her. Butch buddies find secret desires racing out of control. A summer job building trails sparks trailblazing into all-new territory.

Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada’s National Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badge follows the Murray family as they struggle with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After the death of her stepmother, Frances "Frankie" Murray returns to Calgary to help her father, Jimmy, and her sister, Bernadette, pay the mortgage on the family home. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest, old tensions are reignited.

Not every story has a happy ending. Since her brother's death, eight-year-old Egg Murakami has been living day-to-day on the family ostrich farm near Bittercreek, discovering life to be an ever-perplexing condition. Mama Murakami has curled up inside a bottle, and Papa has exiled himself to the barn with the birds. Big sister Kathy tells stories to Egg so that the world might not seem so awful.