Showing results for "Americans" in Coming of Age

New York City, 1950. Dreams come true for radio personality Maggie Lane when she gets her big break in the exciting new world of television. The Maggie Lane Baking Show is on the air. All she has to do is act like the ideal housewife, create sumptuous desserts, charm the show’s sponsors, and sign a morality clause to ensure that her girl-next-door image remains untarnished. Although newlywed Maggie has never baked so much as a cookie, and knows even less about maintaining a home, keeping up appearances is a necessary ingredient for success. Easy.

After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, 16-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the 20th century. Caleb’s moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.

From the bestselling author of Almond, The Devil Wears Prada meets The Office in this witty, humane, and ultimately transformative story of a group of young workers who rebel against the status quo. Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the...

Jimmy Lee Hickam grew up along Red Dog Road, a dead-end strip of gravel and mud buried deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio. It is the poorest road, in the poorest county, in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a heathen mix of thieves, moonshiners, drunkards, and general anti-socials that for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny, someday working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.

Eight-year-old Benjamin Franklin “B .F.” Windes decides to abandon home and trail his father’s path. Thus begins a trip of constant struggle with disease, severe weather, hardship, Indian attack, and death on his lone journey across much of what is now the United States. B. F. spends the next 11 years in gold rush towns in California - first as a barber, then as a physician’s assistant - before departing for the Caribbean at age 19, where he becomes a blockade runner during the American Civil War.

Born with no air in his lungs, it was only when Reuben Land's father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that Reuben's lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma from then on, making him a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that...

From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from...

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession based on the hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author. “As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the...

For the teenaged Luc, his days are preoccupied with the daily dramas of high school. President John F. Kennedy's assassination seems a world away. But the winds of history find its way to his small Montana town as marijuana clouds rise in the hallways and the notices of neighborhood young men of "Killed in Action" in Vietnam keep arriving at an increasing rate.

An excellent student from a poor, traditional family in Seoul, the narrator has absorbed the same message her whole life: Only a boy can provide the family with dignity and wealth. Not her. Not her three sisters. Receiving approval only for uncomplaining sacrifice, she has resolved to take on her family’s troubles. She is a good girl. And she knows what good girls must do.

Audiobook performed by Tom Hanks Pulitzer Prize Finalist | New York Times Bestseller | A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick | A New York Times Book Review Notable Book | TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post; O...

From the National Bestselling author of The Boat Runner comes a poignant, luminous novel that follows one family over decades and across the world—perfect for fans of the film Boyhood. Western New York, 1978: Jamie, Lewis, and Connor Thurber watch their parents’ destructive dance of loving...

The acclaimed, bestselling author—winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize—tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families’ lives. One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s...

“A sweet, life-affirming tale . . . with a liberal sprinkling of magic.” —Marie Claire (UK) “Filled with family secrets, intrigue, and magic aplenty.” —Booklist Bestselling author Cecelia Ahern follows The Gift and P.S. I Love You with the mesmerizing story of a teenaged girl coming...

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Time, Bloomberg, and Electric Literature. RuPaul and Eric Cervini's Allstora Book Club Pick for June. "Thomas Grattan is a master of plot—that rare ability—which makes In Tongues a real roller coaster: funny, sad, shocking, and, finally, quite moving."...

CHRISTY AWARD WINNER A Colombian American journalist tries to save her career by taking an assignment somewhere she never thought she’d go—Colombia—in this heartwarming debut novel about rediscovering our family stories. “A beautiful homage to a mother’s bravery and to the grace...

Anthropology of an American Girl is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is the story of a young woman and her culture that strives for a measure of narrative depth, detail, and objectivity. It follows its protagonist, Eveline Auerbach, as she moves through a pre-digital American landscape during...

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.

The Last American Geek is a captivating, hilarious coming-of-age story about a young outcast who is tired of his miserable life. The geek is unattractive, friendless, bullied; is filled with frustration and social anxiety, and has no chance of finding quality romance. But rather than accept his predicament and settle for a lifetime of misery, he flips the switch in the most unusual ways, only the most ingenious, unique, cunning and determined geek could conjure up!

BBC radio dramatisations of classic novels centred around engaging anti-heroes who dominate high society Ambitious. Ruthless. Unprincipled. With their blurred morals and relatable imperfections, it’s no wonder we find anti-heroes so appealing and fascinating. Featuring a mixture of male and...