Showing titles in Coming of Age

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious criminal for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way – not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary drug dealer. But Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And he has to break into prison on Christmas Day, to save his mum.

‘Everything I look for in fantasy’ – George R. R. Martin Two outcasts find themselves caught in a web of dangerous magic and dark secrets that could change the world forever . . . From the author of the Shadowhunter Chronicles, Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare is start of a riveting epic...

Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life. But these are human concerns. The concerns of those confined to land. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Stories that called sailors to their doom. Stories that dragged them down and drowned them.

The statues disappeared in an instant. While they were on Earth, they caused confusion and destruction without ever lifting a finger. They also contributed to the untimely death of April May: a young woman who stumbled into their path, naming them the Carls and gaining viral fame in an avalanche of conspiracy theories. When April's friends try to carry on with their lives, a series of clues arrive - mysterious books that seem to predict the future - and which also seem to suggest April may be very much alive...But there's a bigger mystery to solve. 

The Plus One [n] informal a person who accompanies an invited person to a wedding or a reminder of being single, alone and absolutely plus none 'Brilliant and bonkers in equal measure'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Had me laughing the whole way through' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'When Harry Met Sally meets The Devil...

One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah’s mother tells him three things: don’t use drugs, don’t use weapons, don’t steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn’t there. They have fled their village in Ghazni to seek safety outside Afghanistan but his mother has decided to return home to her younger children.

Brought to you by Penguin. It’s late 1944. Hitler’s rockets are slamming down on London with vicious regularity and it’s the coldest winter in living memory. Allied victory is on its way, but it’s bloody well dragging its feet. In a large house next to Hampstead Heath, Vee Sedge is just...

From the Irish Tatler's Woman of the Year for Literature and one of the AN Post Irish Book Awards's Best New Irish Writers comes a novel about one woman's decision to leave everything behind . . . 'Thrillingly relatable' Harper's Bazaar 'This funny, thoughtful novel will resonate with lots of...

What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an 11-year-old girl grappling with emotional changes in her own life? One morning, Julia and her parents wake up to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing....

In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer - Vincent’s last taste of innocence and first taste of real life - dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life, and seeking one’s own destiny.

Abby Lamb has done it. She's found the Great Good in her husband, Ralph, and together they will start a family and put all the darkness in her childhood to rest. But then the Lambs move in with Ralph's mother, Laura, whose depression has made it impossible for her to live on her own. She's venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, who has a complicated understanding of motherhood given the way her own, now-estranged, mother raised her. When Laura takes her own life, her ghost starts to haunt Abby and Ralph in very different ways. 

Alethea Lopez is about to turn 40. Fashionable, feisty and fiercely independent, she manages a boutique in Port of Spain, but behind closed doors she's covering up bruises from her abusive partner and seeking solace in an affair with her boss. When she witnesses a woman murdered by a jealous lover, the reality of her own future comes a little too close to home. Bringing us her truth in an arresting, unsparing Trinidadian voice, Alethea unravels memories repressed since childhood and begins to understand the person she has become. Her next step is to decide the woman she wants to be.

From the bestselling biographer and author of the book that inspired the BBC TV series – Jane Austen Rise of a Genius – comes a gorgeously escapist novel about the summer the greatest romance novelist fell in love ‘A glorious romantic retelling’ SUN ‘Delicious’ THE TIMES ‘The Jane...

Brought to you by Penguin. Scarborough, 1880. Young Jeannie spends her days watching her mother and the other harbour girls sitting at the water's edge - mending nets, gutting herring - and waiting for her friend Ethan Wharton to come in on his father's fishing smack. As she was growing up...

Two sisters, a lifetime of secrets, and the chance to set the record straight... Meet Goldie and Vee: sisters, dreamers, grafters. In their forties, both appear to have it all... Until Goldie finds the courage to leave Benedict. Once upon a time their faux marriage worked, but when the magnetic...

Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing both her heritage and her growing love for her best friend Fran. Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Lonely and far from home, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher. Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo's nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in seedy bars. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light.

The epic sequel to Taran Matharu’s instant Sunday Times bestseller, Dragon Rider, in which empires fall and dragons soar… ‘A dazzlingly epic and richly complex world of dragons, magic, and rebellion’ Amélie Wen Zhao on Dragon Rider Jai dreams of being a dragon rider. He dreams of...

Tonight 19-year-old William Lavery is dressed for success, his first black-tie do. It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. He can barely believe his luck. But as the guests sip their drinks and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes, a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation. It is October 1966, and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school: Aberfan.

Growing up in the same Ghanaian town, Selasi and Akorfa are more than just cousins – they're best friends. The girls share everything – whispered late-night conversations, dreams for the future, secrets. But as they enter their teens, Selasi begins to change, constructing a wall around herself designed to keep everyone away. Soon Akorfa no longer recognises her sullen, withdrawn cousin. It will take many years for their paths to cross again. Their lives may have drifted in different directions, but Selasi and Akorfa haven't forgotten the closeness they once shared.

As an empire burns, he will rise from the ashes. Sparrow, the Sunday Times bestselling historical epic by James Hynes, is the incredibly moving story of one boy’s journey to freedom in the harsh world of the Roman Empire. Raised in a brothel at the edge of a dying empire, a boy of no known...