Showing titles in Coming of Age

On Halloween 1963, 11-year-old Chuck Coolidge and his brother, Danny, are lost in a toxic smog covering the steel town of Slippery Elm, Pennsylvania. When the smog lifts, half the town is sick, and 20 people are dead. And Danny is missing. Now, more than 20 years later, Chuck's teenage daughter, Frank, plots her escape from this "busted and disgusted" town. When a murdered child is found in the river, investigators link the crime to the disappearance of Danny in '63, and Frank's life is turned upside down. In the face of her worst fears, she must uncover her family's dark past.

Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she'll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father's - now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox - lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lennox's centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents' secret, just as she's falling in love for the first time . . .

Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together. Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth.

Twelve summers ago: Poppy and Alex meet. They hate each other and are pretty confident they'll never speak again. Eleven summers ago: they're forced to share a ride home from college, and by the end of it, a friendship is formed. And a pact: every year, one vacation together. Ten summers ago: Alex discovers his fear of flying on the way to Vancouver. Poppy holds his hand the whole way. Seven summers ago: they get far too drunk and narrowly avoid getting matching tattoos in New Orleans. Two summers ago: it all goes wrong. This summer: Poppy asks Alex to join her on one last trip.

Apprenticed to a venerable wizard when his hunter and trapper parents disappear into the forest never to be seen again, Darian is difficult and strong willed - much to the dismay of his kindly master. But a sudden twist of fate will change his life forever when the ransacking of his village forces him to flee into the great mystical forest. It is here in the dark forest that he meets his destiny, as the terrifying and mysterious Hawkpeople lead him on the path to maturity.

This nationally best-selling novel from Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides was adapted into an acclaimed film by Academy Award-winner Sofia Coppola. A haunting yet wickedly funny tale, The Virgin Suicides has captivated countless readers with its intoxicating portrait of lost innocence. A brilliant fusion of dark humor and tragedy, it is an atmospheric, allegorical masterpiece about five oppressed, suicidal sisters and the boys who dream of rescuing them.

In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, 99-year-old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory, filled with tall tales writ large with murder, mayhem, avalanches, and bootlegging. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin.

Long overshadowed by Jane Eyre, Villette is widely admired as one of Charlotte Bronte's finest works. This story of a young teacher at a girlâ¿¿s school in the city of Villette is a particular challenge for the young reader, for it requires maturity of vision, a fine narrative sense - and a command of French! Mandy Weston, a newcomer to Naxos AudioBooks, tells the story magnificently.

Since his beloved wife Helen passed, Luke and six-year-old Amy are just about keeping the show on the road, but he’d do anything to have Helen near him again. Connie’s much-missed mum was everything to her daughter. A friend, a cheer-leader, a comfort, and the best housemate Connie ever had. What she wouldn’t give to speak to her one more time… Teenage twins Alex and Lucy both miss their dad desperately but neither have the words to put it right. In the heart of Dublin, a quiet community is forming, drawn together by the loved ones they have lost, but kept together by friendship and laughter.

Rune Kristiansen and Poppy Litchfield met as children and swore to be friends forever. As teenagers, their friendship grew into a love that promised to last a lifetime. But their worlds were shattered when Rune was sent home to his native Norway. Two years later, Rune is back, and Poppy is ready for their happy ever after to begin. But the boy who returns is not the Rune she remembers. What happened to turn her sweet, thoughtful Rune into this brooding stranger? And will the secret Poppy is carrying bring them closer together or separate them forever?

As Pip unravels the truth behind his own "great expectations" in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him toward maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

For some boys fitting in means standing out. Meet Frank - he isn't like other kids. Intrepid explorer, sartorial connoisseur; he's as strange as he is brilliant. But Frank discovers the hard way that people don't like brilliant, and they hate strange. What Frank longs for - aside from a father - is a friend.

Brooke is a divorced single mom, financially strapped, living with her mother, and holding tight to the one thing that matters most: her two-year-old daughter, Etta. Then, in a matter of seconds, Brooke’s life is shattered when she’s carjacked. Helpless and terrified, all Brooke can do is watch as Etta, still strapped in her seat, disappears into the Los Angeles night. Miles away, Etta is found by Molly, a homeless teen who is all too used to darkness. Thrown away by her parents, and with a future as stable as the wooden crate she calls home, Molly survives day to day by her wits.

After inexperienced seventeen-year-old Isaac loses his virginity through a dating app—a disappointing yet addictive experience—he spends his final months before university escaping into a dizzying new world of casual sex with forgettable men. This all changes when he meets twenty-eight-year-old Harrison at a party. Isaac is immediately infatuated by the handsome, charismatic artist, but while they grow closer, his sense of self becomes increasingly hazy

Paradise Row, London. December 1865. Snow is falling fast, and Sally Suggs is working tirelessly to bring in enough money to keep bread on the table. Her father, a skilled rag-and-bone man, has fallen ill, and now Sally has taken up his trade. But this is a man’s world and competition is fierce, and Sally’s rival, Finn Kelly, always seems to be one step ahead.

Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field - and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind's Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', the Nebula Award-winning 'The Day Before the Revolution', and the Hugo-nominated 'Winter's King', which gave listeners their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he's teetering on the edge of collapse. Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words); his wife, Beverley, a celebrated novelist; and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.

St. Petersburg, New Year's Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers' rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear before being betrayed in turn.