Showing titles in Coming of Age

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

Adam plays “Bud”, the all-American boy-next-door on one of the most popular TV shows of the 1950s, but Adam has a secret. The boy-next-door likes boys instead of girls, and no one can know. Adam’s life becomes increasingly complicated, as his studio assigns him a girlfriend and he falls for a male co-star. The truth becomes ever harder to conceal, as Adam becomes increasingly famous and his face begins to appear on magazine covers. All Adam has ever wanted to do is act, but can he lead the life he wants to lead and maintain his secret?

When his grandfather dies, a boy named Jay travels south with his family to the property he left them, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Still, Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the local son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

Farah moves into Liberty House - an arcadia, a community in harmony with nature - at the tender age of six, with her family. The commune's spiritual leader, Arcady, preaches equality, non-violence, anti-speciesism, free love, and uninhibited desire for all. At 15, Farah learns she is intersex, and begins to go beyond the confines of gender, as she explores the arc of her own desires. What, Farah asks, is a man or a woman? What does it mean to be part of a community? What is utopia when there are refugees nearby seeking shelter who cannot enter?

The members of an elite girls swim team are the reigning queens at their South African boarding school. And then Italian student Fiamma Coronna joins their ranks. Beautiful, athletic, and suddenly commanding all the coach's attention, Fiamma is the envy of every girl on the team—until the summer she walks into the rural grasslands surrounding the school and disappears.

Conrad Aybinder is a boy with a secret; 16 and ready for anything. A chemistry genius, he has spent the summer on an independent-study project with his favorite teacher, Sammy Tampari. Sammy is also Conrad’s first love. But the first day of senior year, the students are informed that Mr. Tampari is dead. Rumors suggest an overdose. How can it be? Drugs are for unhappy people, Conrad is sure, not for people who have fallen in love.

The 1960s brought Seth and Payton all they'd fantasized about—perfect friendships, a successful four-man band, and most importantly, each other. Together they embarked on a tour that brought them stimulating highs and shattering lows, and they prospered and suffered in one another's arms. The two men carried each other and carried a group that created both a history and a future for rock. But, at some point, their music blurred with the news of their love, and the world was faced with the choice to embrace its heroes or revert back to its deep-rooted prejudices.

Chris and RJ are two teenage boys raised in Mormon communities. Though both are poster boys for their church with perfect academic records and pretty girlfriends; buried feelings soon rise to the surface when they are assigned to serve a mission together as part of their rite of passage.

When Obiefuna's father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family's apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend.

Raised in a brothel at the edge of a dying empire, a boy of no known origin creates his own identity. He is Sparrow, who sings without reason and can fly from trouble. His world is a kitchen, a herb-scented garden, a loud and dangerous tavern, and the mysterious upstairs where the ‘wolves’ – prostitutes and slaves from every corner of the empire – conduct their business.

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.

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Unsinkable and wrecked by grief, motherless and aimless and looking for connection, Helen Dedleder is a girl with a gift she doesn't want to use and a pack of friends who are all just helping each other get by. So cut off from the rest of the world that even the internet is blocked (never mind traffic in and out), Rosary, California, is run by evangelicals but was named by Catholics. It’s a town on very formal relations with its neighbors, one that boasts an oil refinery as well as a fairly sizable population of teenagers.

Vulgarian Rhapsody immerses listeners in a fading bohemia of queer dive bars, drag clubs, and countercultural cafes. The book's narrator (a longtime frenemy of Harris who's every bit as snarky and annoying as he is) tells the story with sadistic relish and an ironist's eye for the absurd. Anyone feeling sickly from too many uplifting stories of personal empowerment, precious coming-of-age tales, or sugarcoated romances will find the perfect antidote in this hilariously acidic comedy of manners.

Life is a dream, or is it? Zac can remember every detail of his dreams. He’s profoundly disturbed because he dreams about Isaac, a gay boy, and Zac is absolutely, 100 percent straight, or is he? Isaac is troubled by his newly vivid dreams too because he’s dreaming about Zac. Yuck! How could a boy want to do that with girls? Zac lives in 1983 and Isaac in 2018 so how can they possibly dream about each other? As both boys begin to doubt their sanity and wonder if they are real, their dreams begin to bring them closer together across time.

Henley sits on the sideline of life. What else is a fat kid to do? He's determined to make a change as he enters high school and summons the courage to take a chance only to have super-jock Axel O'Connell go off on him for being a pathetic slug. Henley nearly calls it quits, but pushes forward, and then something amazing happens; Axel does an abrupt about-face and offers to help Henley lose weight and get in shape. Henley is suspicious of Axel's motives, but so desperately needs help he takes him up on his offer.

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.

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.

A punto de cumplir 30 años, Simón se traslada a vivir a Nueva York con muchas ilusiones, algunos remilgos y poco dinero. Con su labor de periodista como arma para codearse con las altas esferas y su perfil en Grindr como llave para divertirse con las bajas, Simón conocerá también a sus amigos Carlos y Tomás, cómplices en las mieles del hedonismo y los sinsabores de la emigración. Un camino luminoso de placer y sensibilidad en una ciudad donde el costumbrismo es sinónimo de frenesí y la infinidad de estímulos se parece quizá demasiado a la soledad.

True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals and have politicians, doctors and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges listeners into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before, Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact.