Showing results by publisher "Dreamscape Media, LLC" in Coming of Age

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North.

Luc O'Donnell is tangentially - and reluctantly - famous. His rock-star parents split when he was young, and the father he's never met spent the next 20 years cruising in and out of rehab. Now that his dad's making a comeback, Luc's back in the public eye, and one compromising photo is enough to ruin everything. To clean up his image, Luc has to find a nice normal relationship...and Oliver Blackwood is as nice and normal as they come. He's a barrister, an ethical vegetarian, and someone who has never inspired a moment of scandal in his life. He’s perfect boyfriend material.

In Boyfriend Material, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends...and somehow figured out a way to make it work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc's feeling the social pressure to propose. But it'll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a bowl full of special curry to get these two from "I don't know what I'm doing" to "I do". Good thing Oliver is such perfect Husband Material.

I found Reed and loved him more than I loved myself. We were young... beautiful... entitled. Money and private schools, our families' lavish parties, and posh New York City apartments - it was all mere window dressing. What was real was our obsessive love, which grew right along with us as we moved toward adulthood. It consumed me, and only in his arms did I feel wanted and safe. But I have a secret. It's big and, to some, unforgivable. And it's why I let Reed destroy me, or maybe I destroyed us.

With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned. When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach. He will treat his students as people poised to enter the adult world.

Matthew Prince is young, rich, and thoroughly spoiled. So what if his parents barely remember he exists and the press is totally obsessed with him? He's on top of the world. But one major PR misstep later, he's cut off and shipped away to spend the holidays in his grandparents' charming small-town hellscape. Population: who cares? It's bad enough that he's stuck in some festive winter wonderland—it's even worse that he has to share space with Hector Martinez, an obnoxiously attractive local who's unimpressed with anything and everything Matthew does. 

With some thematic overlap with Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm or what Mad Men would have been like if Sally Draper got to tell her side of the story, Little Miseries is set in Iowa and Minnesota in the '60s and '70s, a time and place when parents didn’t talk much to their children but certainly talked around them—while dipping into whiskey or rum punch, whether on a long drive, on the beach, or in the comfort of their own home. Little Miseries is a tribute to what it means to come into awareness, to be a part of a family unit, and to bear responsibility for those you loved.

When nineteen-year-old Avery awakens to flames consuming her family's remote compound, she knows it's her only chance to escape her father's grueling survival training, bizarre rules, and gruesome punishments. She and her brother Cole flee the grounds for the first time in their lives, suddenly homeless in a world they know nothing about. After months of hiding out, they are arrested for shoplifting and a shocking discovery is made—Avery and Cole were kidnapped fifteen years earlier, stolen by cult leaders they knew as Mom and Dad. 

It is 1993, the last year of school, and Laurie’s final spring before adulthood. She works part time at a restaurant and looks after Cindy, her neglected potty-mouthed little neighbor. Like her mother, Laurie devours books and dreams big. Her father works at a garage, where she constantly struggles to keep her car running. 

The Wall Street banker is single in New York City and overwhelmed by the pressure to scramble up the corporate and romantic ladders. Feeling her biological clock ticking, she analyzes her love life like a business deal and vows to lock in a husband before her 30th birthday. The Manhattan dating-app scene has as many ups and downs as the stock market, and outsourcing dates to an algorithm isn’t exactly Rae’s idea of romance. 

In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the buildup to and fallout from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. The murderer Angel, her mother Carol, and the victim Birdy, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister, Marie.

In the seaside town of San Benedetto, soccer (or calcio) is more than just a sport: it's an obsession. Twenty-two-year-old Etto, however, couldn't care less about soccer. His twin brother Luca, a rising soccer star, died tragically in a motorcycle accident, and their mother, unable to cope with her grief, drowned herself on the anniversary of Luca's death.

Four children live on an island that serves as the repository for all the world’s garbage. Trash arrives, the children sort it, and then they feed it to a herd of insatiable pigs: a perfect system. But when a barrel washes ashore with a boy inside, the children must decide whether he is more of the world’s detritus, meant to be fed to the pigs, or whether he is one of them.  

Jules Carmichael needs to get her life together. Pronto. School's been hell, there was that tiny stint in rehab, and worst of all, she's lost her cushy summer job. The only available work is at Office Jax, home of horrid '90s music and the biggest jerk on this side of the galaxy.... Recovering from a brutal break-up and taking a hiatus from college, Ryan DeShane has just discovered the Six Ultimate Steps to the Perfect Summer Fling. It's a brilliant distraction, and Jules is a tantalizing target. But the steps work a little too well - because he and Jules are definitely, uh, flinging.

Tommy and I grew up together in a foster home that nearly killed us both. We loved each other with our whole hearts until the world tore us apart. And now I’m in the back seat of his car, and he won’t tell me where he’s taking me. As the days pass, one thing is clear: The attraction between us is as powerful as ever. His kisses are still sweet. His touch is irresistible. But I don’t know if the boy I loved is going to save me or ruin me. 

It was simple: Pay the debt and I stay out of jail. Pay the debt and I stay alive. But I sacrificed it all for Beth. Punishment is coming, but I can take it - as long as Beth is safe. Away from her mother and everyone else who would hurt her. I gave it all up for two days with her. And it was worth it. She always was. The secrets we keep are what tears us apart...

Malcolm Dowd is almost positive he recognizes the freshman who shows up for a session at his office in Baxter College’s Center for Behavioral Health - he just can’t place her. When suddenly she stands, takes off her wig, and reveals herself as Noah, the young man Malcolm had been treating months earlier, it marks the start of a relationship that will change them both. After losing his wife at a young age, Malcolm dedicated himself to giving his two daughters the stable, predictable childhood he never had. But now, nothing is predictable.

The summer before my senior year of high school I had only one goal: to make Alden Warner see me as more than his best friend's annoying little sister. Finally, my wish came true, and he noticed me - in a big way. Too bad the next morning he had no memory of our night together, leaving me heartbroken and, as I later discovered, pregnant. For the last four years, I've been rocking the single mom thing, making sure my daughter comes first. In fact, everything was going fine - until Alden storms back into my life…as my new boss. 

Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child to her mother's abandonment and now an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Yet when her grandmother calls and asks her to watch over the children of a recent widower in a small, isolated town in Colorado, she takes it as a chance to finally organize her life. 

The NFL is full of rules. Rules I've never broken, never challenged, never even scratched...until the day Lucas Carrington crashes into my life with his hard body and I-don't-give-a-f--k attitude. After I almost injure my father's star player, I volunteer to make sure he's in top shape. At first, it's hell. I don't like his cockiness and his easy smile. I don't like the way he oozes sex or how his penetrating eyes follow me everywhere. But that doesn't stop me from wanting him. He's meant to be a distraction - something to occupy my mind for these precious few remaining hot summer nights.