Showing results for "John English" in Coming of Age

Once a Runner captures the essence of what it means to be a competitive runner; to devote your entire existence to a single-minded pursuit of excellence. It has become one of the most beloved sports novels ever written. Originally self-published in 1978 and sold at road races out of the trunk of the author's car, reading the book became a rite of passage for many runners, and tattered copies were handed down like sacred texts from generation to generation.

As a favor to the beautiful actress Mary Deschenes, Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer hires her 18-year-old son Allen Winslow as an aide for his 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Traveling west against his will, Allen finds himself in the company of Addie Grace Lord, sixteen, sister of one of Custer’s regimental surgeons. The two fall in love, and it is with foreboding that Addie Grace watches Allen and her brother George ride out with Custer’s Seventh Cavalry....

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.

Mage Errant: Publisher's Pack contains books one and two of the Mage Errant series: Into the Labyrinth and Jewel of the Endless Erg. Hugh of Emblin is, so far as he's concerned, the worst student that the Academy at Skyhold has ever seen. He can barely cast any spells at all, and those he does cast tend to fail explosively.

It turns out that surviving the depths of the labyrinth and helping stop a coup both tend to attract notice. If Hugh had his way, he'd happily go back to being just another anonymous student. He has more than enough to deal with already as he starts his second year, between his crushing load of schoolwork, training as a prospective candidate to the Librarians Errant, and navigating a long distance relationship.

Half a millennium ago, in a desperate attempt to defeat the Ithonian Empire, Kanderon Crux and her allies banished the city of Imperial Ithos from Anastis. Her dread weapon, the Exile Splinter, even erased the memory of its location from the universe. Now it's returning and bringing the Exile Splinter back with it. The great powers of the continent are desperately hunting for the lost city, knowledge lost even to Kanderon herself. None know what ancient Ithonian weapons and enchantments might still be found in the ruins, but the Exile Splinter alone would be a prize to justify war.

It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of 93 matriculated and the boys went their separate ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the Crazy Eight have not kept in touch. Or at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives an invitation from the school to attend the...

I'll be the first to admit that I live at extremes. After going 10 years locked in what felt like a dysfunctional marriage, I'm now decidedly boy-free. In nearly three years I've had no boyfriends, no flings, no dates, and no sex. For the sake of my dream career, the sacrifice has been easy. At least it was. Until he came along. Lukas Hendricks. He's rude, gorgeous, arrogant - a stone-carved wall of muscle and distraction. He's everything I know to avoid but there's no avoiding your next-door neighbor.

Brought to you by Penguin. The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to...

An Encounter is one of James Joyce’s most quietly disturbing and psychologically precise stories, capturing a moment when childhood imagination collides with the uneasy realities of the adult world.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Emma Naomi, best known for Bridgerton. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Marilyn Butler. With its irrepressible heroine and playful literary games, Northanger Abbey is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane...

John Searles’s Help for the Haunted is an unforgettable story of a most unusual family, their deep secrets, their harrowing tragedy, and ultimately, a daughter’s discovery of a dark and unexpected mystery. Sylvie Mason’s parents have an unusual occupation—helping “haunted souls” find...

Four full-cast dramatisations of classic Gothic novels, plus documentaries exploring the genre’s rise and enduring appeal Dark deeds, dastardly villains, innocent victims and supernatural happenings – these are the terrifying tropes that make up Gothic fiction, a genre that has captured our...

The three novels that make up The Forsyte Saga chronicle the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle class Forsyte family through three generations, beginning in Victorian London during the 1880s and ending in the early 1920s. Galsworthy's masterly narrative examines not only their fortunes but also the wider developments within society, particularly the changing position of women.

A coming-of-age novel about two women falling in love during the culturally and politically turbulent 1980s. It's 1984 in The Valleys, South Wales, and Eluned Hughes is stuck. The miners' strikes are ravaging her family and community, and her boyfriend of six years, Lloyd, is starting to bring...

In his tantalizing debut novel, Paradise Salvage, at once a taut thriller and a lyrical coming-of-age story, John Fusco marvelously traces the unforgettable trajectory of 12-year-old Nunzio Paradiso's last summer of innocence.

Brought to you by Penguin. What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept. The Cleverley family...

Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service, don’t they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told… His fourth son William, the long-suffering narrator, is the constant butt of his father’s jokes and victim of his brother’s indifference. But as death, divorce and other darker dramas follow, father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.

William is a lonely young man on the loose in the late 1960s. A disastrous appearance as a stand-up comic in a pub called The Man In the Moon is only the start of his adventures, in which he consorts with theatrical types, frenzied advertising men and accident-prone lodgers. William’s exploits lead him eventually to the consulting rooms of a Harley Street psychiatrist, where his delusions that he is a comic genius can finally be laid bare.

Can a man who loves his small hometown trust it to love him back? Jared Thomas has lived in the mountain town of Coda, Colorado his whole life. He can't imagine living anywhere else. But Jared's opportunities are limited—the only other gay man in town is twice his age, and although Jared originally planned to be a teacher, the backlash that might accompany the gig keeps him working at his family's store instead. Then Matt Richards moves to town. Matt may not be into guys, but he doesn't care that Jared is.