Showing titles in Coming of Age

Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. At 27 years old, he's finally moved to London and escaped his parents' tiny fish and chip shop, his beloved collection of house plants are thriving and every Monday evening he has a date night with his boyfriend, Tobbs. But Danny's life is thrown into chaos when he discovers at an STI clinic that Tobbs might be cheating on him. And then he—and his plants—are unceremoniously evicted from his London flat. So, he's forced to move in with his best friend Jacob, a non-binary artiste who Danny's known since childhood. 

First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline - and Eve and her son, Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn't have been a happier summer. But then Eve left, and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry's door, it's almost as if they've all come home again. But there's still one missing. Where is Eve? And what, exactly, is her story?

Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone - or so they think. But after being labeled 'the most homophobic town in America', a group of queer activists are moving in, and everything is about to change. Linda welcomes the newcomers. The less they know about the death of her son, the better. Avery is furious at being uprooted from her life in LA. She dreads her classmates discovering that her mom is the head of the queer task force. And Gabe, a lifelong Big Burr resident, is no longer sure about the life he's built with his wife.

In the Black Country in the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has moved to Britain with his wife to secure a brighter future for themselves and their children. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and spirituality.

Marguerite Demers is 24 when she leaves Paris for the sleepy southern village of Saint-Sulpice, to take up a job as a live-in nurse. Her charge is Jerome Lanvier, once one of the most powerful men in the village, and now dying alone in his large and secluded house, surrounded by rambling gardens. Manipulative and tyrannical, Jerome has scared away all his previous nurses. 

It’s 1977 and Tammy has a secret she can’t share with her conservative family. One she’s only shared in unsent letters to her hero Harvey Milk. She’s gay. Sharon is living in San Francisco - an exciting world full of punk, rebellion and new opportunities - but there is only one person who truly understands her. Her new pen pal Tammy. And so, the biggest year of their lives is about to begin, to the soundtrack of Blondie, Patti Smith and the Ramones, full of protest and rebellion and the discovery that they no longer have to blend in....

A dark, edgy, voice-driven literary debut novel about twin sisters that explores body image and queerness as well as toxic diet culture and the power of sisterhood, love, and lifelong friendships, written by a talented protégé of Roxane Gay. Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the...

THE AERODYNAMICS OF PORK is an irresistible novel of love, music and comedy - 'A master storyteller' Independent on Sunday 'Gale's concoction is irresistible: modern relationships with period charm' Armistead Maupin Seth, a musical prodigy on the eve of his sixteenth birthday, is obsessed with...

Patrick Gale's KANSAS IN AUGUST is a witty, warm novel of childhood and abandonment for readers of Armistead Maupin and Edmund White 'Modern, excellent and sympathetic' Stephen Fry Musical-obsessed Hilary Metcalfe, abandoned by his lover Rufus on his birthday, gets drunk, discovers a baby and...

A big-hearted, funny and sad novel about the messiness of love, family and belief LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD ‘Hilarious and timely, a dazzling debut’ John Boyne ‘Bustling, bubbly, bittersweet fun’ Daily Mail ‘Bulging...

“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder A...

Patrick Gale's THE FACTS OF LIFE is a mesmerising, epic yet intimate novel of love, music and the life events that stay with us forever - perfect for any reader of Armistead Maupin, or E M Forster 'Absorbing . . . deftly characterised, deeply involving and relevant' The Times German composer...

Insightful and full of understanding and warmth, Patrick Gale's FRIENDLY FIRE is a richly compelling story of adolescence, sexuality and the lessons we carry forever. 'An intense tale of love, life, intellectualism and passion. Inspirational' Daily Express 'Utterly compelling from first to last'...

Bittersweet and startling, A SWEET OBSCURITY is a novel of childhood, love and the consequences of how lives are lived. 'Intriguing and impressive. A memorable study of a child forced cruelly, even tragically, to grow up too soon' Sunday Times Since her mother's death, nine year old Dido has...

Truly compelling and rich with emotional insight , Patrick Gale's Cornish novel, ROUGH MUSIC is a beautiful story of a marriage and the secrets a family holds. 'Sparkling with emotional intelligence. A gripping portrait of a marriage and the quiet, devastating fall-out of family life'...

From the bestselling author of A PLACE CALLED WINTER comes a new novel of boyhood, coming of age, and the confusions of desire and reality. For all readers of Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT or L P Hartley's THE GO-BETWEEN. 1970s Weston-Super-Mare and ten-year-old oddball Eustace, an only child, has life...

‘Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know.’ Jonathan Franzen Virginia, 1966. The motionless deeps of the lake outside Stillwater College are being ruffled. Lee...

'I have meditated repeatedly on what it was about Finn that had me so dismantled.' A young woman moves from the countryside to the city. Inexplicably, inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life. Finn is 19 years older than her, wears men's clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile - and a long-term girlfriend. With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fall out of love.

A warm, funny, and whip-smart debut novel about rebellious youth, inconceivable motherhood, and the complications of belonging—to a city, a culture, and a family—when none of them can quite contain who you really are. All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . . Twenty-four-year-old...

Raised as a boy in a grand but unhappy family in Nigeria, Otolorin Akinro escapes to boarding school knowing two things: she is truly a girl, and to stay safe, she must hide that truth. Away from the cruelty of her childhood home, Oto blooms even as she strives to be the best boy she can, finding true friendship and working hard to earn a scholarship to an American university, hoping someone out there might help her understand the secrets her body holds.