Showing titles in Coming of Age

As Zimbabwe emerges into independence, Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her second year at the Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart. Determined to excel, Tambu exhausts herself with her efforts to climb to the top of the school's honour rolls. The further she pushes herself, however, the further she feels from any reward; and the roots of colonialism threaten to trip her at every step. The sequel to Nervous Conditions is as moving, darkly witty and riveting as its predecessor.

A girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.

Against the mythical dreamscape of America, Auster brilliantly weaves the bizarre narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg, an orphan searching for love, his father, and the key to the riddle of his origin and fate.

She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead. Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be-real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He's way out of Corey's league. Also, he's taken. Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in the "gimp ghetto" of McHerrin Hall.

Amber Walker and her older brother, Jake, have an abusive father. One night, her brother's best friend, Liam, sees her crying and climbs through her bedroom window to comfort her. That one action sparks a love/hate relationship that spans over the next eight years. What happens when Amber starts to view her brother's best friend a little differently? And how will her brother, who has always been a little overprotective, react when he finds out that the pair are growing closer?

“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...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the comic masterpiece of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who trained as a river-boat pilot (from which experience he took his pen-name, Mark Twain). His most famous book describes a boy's journey down the Mississippi aboard a raft with the runaway black slave Jim.

It’s been a year since Yuki Hirano left home - or more precisely, was booted from it—to study forestry in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. Being a woodsman is not the future he imagined, but his name means “courage,” and Yuki hopes to live up to it. He’s adapting to his job and learning constantly. In between, he records local legends—tales pulsing with life, passion, and wondrous gods. Kamusari has other charms as well. One of them is Nao.

Rejected by all, he must learn to master the darkness within if he is to stop Mal’goroth from destroying humanity. Alone, he battles to control the malevolent magic that has consumed him as he searches for some way to turn his destructive new powers against the Dark Gods themselves. To win, he must somehow transform his own damnation into mankind’s salvation.

A hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin...

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

"[A] glorious, glittery saga of friendship and loss... I read The Air You Breathe in two nights. (One might say I inhaled it.)." --NPR "Echoes of Elena Ferrante resound in this sumptuous saga."--O, The Oprah Magazine "Enveloping...Peebles understands the shifting currents of female friendship...

With this publication in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America. "A brilliant and moving work—unique, refreshing, imaginatively...

The story of an unhappy little girl, her invalid cousin, and the healing power of friendship and love. Reading level: 4.8...

Giorgio, studente modello figlio di intellettuali borghesi, ha ventidue anni e una vita normale e un po' noiosa. Francesco è torbido, misterioso e affascinante. E baro. Le loro vite viaggiano separate fino all'incontro che segnerà il destino di entrambi, trascinandoli in un vortice ubriacante che a poco a poco diventa un'inarrestabile discesa agli inferi. Una storia struggente sull'amicizia e il tradimento, un viaggio doloroso e inquietante in quel tempo fragile e misterioso che separa la giovinezza dall'età adulta.

In the Soviet Union in 1973, there is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen to be part of the famed USSR gymnastics program. So when eight-year-old Anya is tapped, her family is thrilled. What is left of her family, that is. Years ago her mother disappeared. Anya’s only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years in a Gulag camp—and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her mother’s confidant and might hold the key to her disappearance.

Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in “awful kid stuff,” the experience forms Jim’s ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship.

Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.

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.

Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement. He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime - a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics - whom he swipes from his company's sales department.