Showing titles in Coming of Age

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....

Brought to you by Penguin. Bright and precocious ten-year-old Kwame Akromah knows how to behave. He knows the importance of good manners, how to stay at the top of the class and out of the way when his mother and father are angry with each other. But when his charismatic cousin Yaw arrives from...

After Matthew’s grandfather dies suddenly, four friends struggle to face the trauma of their pasts in the wake of this fresh tragedy. Leah and Jay, a couple since their school days, find their relationship tested, while Nathan deals with a vast and unrequited love and Matthew grapples with his sexuality. In the days that follow, Matthew begins to unearth his grandfather’s past. He finds a different life, full of secrets, and discovers that he and his grandfather may have had more in common than he once thought.

Joyful, defiant and dazzling, this is the story of Rafi Aziz—a Northern boy dreaming of his name up in lights. It's 1981 in the suburbs of Blackburn and, as Rafi's mother reminds him daily, the family moved here from Pakistan to give him the best opportunities. But Rafi longs to follow his own path. Flamboyant, dramatic and musically gifted, he wants to be a Bollywood star.

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, best-selling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever.

It’s the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. Pushed by her mother’s fanaticism and a family tragedy, Bríd joins the IRA and makes a devastating choice. Frightened and guilt ridden, she flees, leaving behind Ireland and her family for America. Years later, her guilt and tragic history still buried, Bríd is an overprotective mother raising her sensitive daughter, Bernie, in Southern California.

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Fiction “Old Enough is full of growth, heartbreak, and winsome bisexual chaos.”—Vogue A debut novel “as astute, funny, and loving as your best friend from college”* about a young bisexual woman who is pulled between a new sense of...

Twenty-year-old Daniel Serban loses his dancing job and threats of being outed to his family force him to flee Limerick, Ireland. Daniel fears his father and the other gypsy men will force him to marry his betrothed, or bring bodily harm to him for being gay. As chance would have it, he ends up in Cleary’s Pub, a gay leather bar in Galway where he meets the grouchy, ginger-bear Ronan O’Riley. Daniel had no idea how much meeting the Dom would transform his life.

From syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito comes a wildly inventive and hysterically funny novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fame, Risky Business, Dead Poets Society, and The Catcher in the Rye.

Set in the late 80s, early 90s, a time when feminism meant women could behave like men, and the gay community in London were coming out of the closet. A time of exciting change as Gen Xers were leading the way towards 3rd wave feminism, the ‘Women can have it all’ approach. That was the plan anyway. London was feeding the world the first inklings of ‘Cool Britannia’ Isabel is caught between the old static world of female conformity and the new world of female masturbation & gay porn. Under the wing of her big sister’s strident feminism, Isabel attempts to be a modern teen.

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.

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD "Full of verve... Revelatory." —Los Angeles Times A dazzling and darkly comic novel of love, violence, and friendship in the California suburbs Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore⁠—beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer...

Michael Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even before his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in American fiction.

Growing up , TJ was Cam's boy next door. When Cam needed a home, TJ's parents—Mae and Jin—took him in. Their family bakery became Cam's safe place. Until he left, and it wasn't anymore. Years later, Cam's world is falling apart. The love of his life, Kai, is gone: but his ghost keeps haunting Cam, and won't let go. And Cam's not sure he wants to let go, not sure he's ready. When he has a chance to return to his home town, to work in a gay bar clinging on in a changing city landscape, he takes it.

**Named One of Book Riot’s BEST QUEER BOOKS OF 2017** “Packed with story and drama … If Tennessee Williams’s ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ could be transposed to the 21st-century South, where queer liberation co-exists alongside the stubborn remains of fire and brimstone, it might read...

Growing up on a homophobic council estate in South Wales with an abusive veteran father made Jamie Taylor’s life intolerable. Her only release was feeding her obsession for rich kid Heather Gardner.

Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong...and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic...and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society will never stand for it. What else can they do but enter into a ‘lavender marriage’ and carry on indulging their true natures in secret?

Malavika Kannan establishes herself as an inimitable voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age debut novel. Which comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist, she used to...

Kentucky was only ever going to be a summer job. Come fall, Blue Riley would be back in North Carolina, in college. But one job led to another, one town led to another, and one woman led to another. Now, after twenty years Blue faces the hardest question of all - is it time to go home?

Growing up in the Black Country under Mrs Thatcher's iron grip, Jamie dreams of a life in a magical metropolis, rubbing shoulders with the mythical creatures from Smash Hits. Despite the quirky characters in his hometown and his mother's witty one-liners, Jamie's heart is set on something greater. Follow him through secondary school, teenage turmoil, and art school, where he falls in love with Billy and the allure of the big city.