Showing titles in Coming of Age

In the sleepy town of Townsend, Washington, there was an act so gruesome that no one would ever be the same. What heinous crime do I speak of? Skylar Torres thinking she could pull off a crop top with that pudgy body of hers. Oh, did you think I was going to say my murder. Well, I thought it was more sensational than anything else, but the real scandal was who killed me and why.

Diamonds and Devils is a story of the life of Roger Holt who grew up as a gay boy with an Evangelical pastor-father, and later became a minister in a predominately LGBTQ congregation. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, but always engaging, Roger's story takes the listener through a life of discovery and challenges. It explores finding and losing religion. When the elderly preacher-father shows up with dementia at his grown gay son’s doorstep, there are shattering revelations.

Lorraine Tyler is the only queer person in Bend, Minnesota. Or, at least, that’s what it feels like when the local church preaches so sternly against homosexuality. Which is why, she’s fighting so hard to win the McGerber scholarship - her ticket out of Bend -even though her biggest competition is her twin sister Becky. And even though she’s got no real hope - not with the scholarship’s morality clause and that one time she kissed the preacher’s daughter.

1978: In a snowy Pennsylvania forest, Reid, a studious high school distance runner meets Everett, a privileged and capricious charmer. As their lives become intertwined, Reid is swept up in Everett’s adventurous world. When a near-fatal accident changes both their lives, Reid and Everett’s determination to keep their love alive faces obstacles of family, time, and distance.

Winner of the 2017 Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, Like Wings, Your Hands is both a philosophical novel and a coming-of-age story, exploring a mother-son relationship in the context of disability and interdependence....

In Grosse Pointe, Michigan the idle rich run wild among one another. The Knights are part of the big four in terms of the US automotive industry. The Fitzpatrick’s are extremely wealthy for a number of things...Beautiful, rich, and dysfunctional. Come, see how the other half live!

If There's a Heaven Above takes the listener on a tour of the Southern California demi-monde Goth scene of the mid-1980s, as seen through the eyes of club-kid, Matt. The novel combines innocence with experience, sex and drugs, Love and Rockets, with just the right touch of poetry. It is a thrilling ride along the freeways and turntables of that era: when AIDS was new, Reagan was King, and hope was a wounded kitten, cared for by the creatures of the night.

Tijabab [TEE-juh-baab] is a cute, little, genderless bunny who survives various encounters with fear and grows up to find Truth, Forgiveness, and Freedom.

For two decades Tyler Gibbons has been keeping a secret from his family. At the tender age of 16, Tyler embarks on a student exchange program. Sent to the Andean city of Ambato, Ecuador, he finds daily adventure as he tries to fit in at school, connect with his host family, and navigate through a world of beaches, volcanoes, and jungles. But tucked deep inside this year are events so profound, so unexpected, they forever shape the man he will become. Now, 25 years later, his mother pulls these soaring tales from her son, exposing, for the first time, the source of a deep unhappiness.

After a string of sexual conquests, she is determined to figure out why the intense romantic connections she's spent her life chasing have left her emotionally high and dry. As Natalie sifts through her past and her present, she confronts her complicated feelings about her plus-sized figure, her bisexuality, and her thwarted career in fashion design.

A heartbroken and humiliated Ricky Graves took the life of a classmate and himself. Five months later, the sleepy community is still in shock and mourning. Ricky's sister, Alyssa, returns to confront her shattered, withdrawn mother and her guilt over the brother she left adrift. Mark McVitry, the lone survivor of the deadly outburst sparked by his own cruelty, is tormented by visions of Ricky's vengeful spirit. Ricky's surrogate older brother, Corky Meeks, grapples with doubts about the fragile boy he tried to protect but may have doomed instead.

A former star and high school standout, first-year student, Kennedy, is quickly humbled by her new surroundings. Classes, team politics, and even simple friendships are difficult to pace, let alone master. Initially, she grins and bears it, mostly because that is what the ultraconservative college leadership encourages. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Besides, new obstacles give Kennedy something to focus on other than the cute girls sitting in her lectures, sporting spandex at practice, and moving in right next door.

"Lieber Gott und Jesus, Verzeihung! Bitte macht, dass ich nicht so bin, und bitte macht, dass das vorbeigeht." Aus den Befürchtungen wird für den 13-jährigen Yngve schnell eine Sehnsucht nach mehr, nachdem er mit Magnus auf der Turnmatte lag. Es beginnt eine Liebe, die vollkommen zu sein scheint. Vor anderen verborgen treffen sich die beiden heimlich in einem romantischen Waldstück und die Beziehung und Gefühle zueinander wachsen stetig ("Er... kam wie ein Geysir mit Lärm und Getöse").

Any Ol' Jack is a 1999 novel by Jack Dexter. The book focuses on the events in the life of a ninth grader living in New Jersey and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly a 12th grader named Kyle whom he meets in an AOL gay chat room.

In Metes and Bounds, surf, sand, and sex meet in the macho world of construction workers. For narrator Matt, "the greatest comfort of surfing comes in the sureness and instinct." Matt is not just coming of age, he's coming out, and in the sun-bleached world of the North Carolina beaches his burgeoning sexuality can toss as many curves as a wave. Through his longings and self-discovery, Matt knows he cannot let others triumph over being the man he knows to be.

A never-ending journey awaits you along a Mobius strip that runs the circulatory system from flushed head to rapid heart, along asphalt lanes stinking of gasoline fumes and vulcanized rubber. Join Fields's feral boys, captivating Peter Pans in flight from detestable home life, school life, everyday life. Along the way, you'll pick up passengers, hitchhikers runaways plotting wicked larks, stay-at-homes longing for a nudge, grownups ready to be bent to a boy's whims.

It's the summer after college graduation, and three best friends must navigate the real world for the first time. Join Erick, Rhys, and Joey, as they spend the first summer after graduation trying to discover who they are outside of school, while not losing themselves. Along with their friends, the boys experience a summer full of joy, heartbreak, and humor on a journey that will test the bonds of friendship.

Sydney Skate considers himself shockproof. For as long as he can remember, he's known that his fashionable Manhattan mother is secretly a lesbian, although he's never let on that he knows. He spends his summer days caring for snakes at the local pet shop before leaving for college at Cornell, shrugging off his father's demands that he skip college and join the exciting world of swimming pool sales for suburbanites.

This is not a hair book. It's a dark comedy of a spiritual misfit, a child with a dream born into the wrong town. Religious cults, corporate cults, and insane clients - Francis can't catch a break. Francis has observed his own inability to fit in since birth, and his decision to be a professional cosmetologist only exacerbates his innate oddness.

Written in an urban vernacular that’s electrifying and intimate, On the Come Up introduces a heroine whose voice is irrepressible, dynamic, and unstintingly honest. Thirteen-year-old AnnMarie Walker dreams of a world beyond Far Rockaway, where the sway of the neighborhood keeps her tied to old ideas about success. While attending a school for pregnant teens, AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Astonishingly, improbably, and four months before she’s due to give birth - she lands a lead role.