Showing titles in Coming of Age

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley with his two brothers, all K wants is to be “a boy from L.A.,” all American. But K—the youngest, named after a Persian king—knows there’s something different about himself. Like the way he feels about his closest friend, Johnny, a longing that he can’t share with anyone.

Eighteen-year-old aspiring comic Joey Rossi just found out his boyfriend has been cheating on him for the past 10 months. But what did he expect? Joey was born with an addiction to toxic jerks - something he inherited from his lovably messy, wisecracking, Italian-American spitfire of a mom (and best friend): 34-year-old Gia Rossi. When Gia’s latest non-relationship goes up in flames only a day later, the pair’s New Jersey apartment can barely contain their rage. In a misguided attempt at revenge, Joey and Gia inadvertently commit a series of crimes and flee the state....

Reminiscent of Hello Beautiful and The Lying Life of Adults, this powerful narrative delves into social changes from 1970 to 2000 and captures a woman’s journey in a pre-#MeToo era via the tale of a mother who returns to her hometown to face the perpetrator of her childhood abuse. When a young girl feels complicit in her own abuse, how does that thwart her attempts to build a happy life as an adult woman? When disturbing memories begin to surface, Marti returns to the small Vermont town she ran away from thirty years ago to face her demons.

Sarah never admits that she’s his mother, but the beautiful boy has watched her survive as a “lot lizard”: a prostitute working the West Virginia truck stops. Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever.

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery - or, at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamorous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

Devon is determined to create a new life for himself as a freshman at Indiana University. He struggles to put his troubled past behind him and keep it from poisoning his new relationships. After a promising start Devon's resolve weakens, but he refuses give up his dream. The moment Devon meets Dorian Gray he knows his life will change forever. Dorian Gray is rich, charming, and the most beautiful young man Devon has ever beheld.

Twenty-four-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood - and the closet - to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend's betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her shock, Andrea soon discovers she's pregnant - and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby. A decade later, her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions.

A nonbinary writer on the eve of top surgery enters into a risky affair during the height of COVID. A lesbian couple enlists a close friend as a sperm donor, plying him with a potent cocktail. A lonely office worker struggling with their gender identity chaperones their nephew to a trans YouTube convention. And in the depths of a Midwestern winter, a sex-addicted librarian relies on her pet ferrets to help resist a relapse at a wild college fair. Capturing both the dark and lovable sides of the human experience, Rainbow Rainbow establishes Lydia Conklin as a fearless new voice.

Cory is the golden boy. He lives a charmed existence. That is until a disturbing revelation and an accident drastically alters his life. Suddenly, he is no longer sure if his friends and teammates will remain true or turn on him if they discover his secrets.

"Chiamami col tuo nome" è il racconto dell'attrazione improvvisa e travolgente che sboccia tra due ragazzi, il diciassettenne Elio, figlio di un professore universitario, in vacanza con la famiglia nella loro villa in Riviera e un giovane ospite, invitato per l'estate, il ventiquattrenne Oliver, che sta lavorando alla sua tesi postdottorato. Quell'estate della metà degli anni Ottanta viene rievocata, a distanza di vent'anni, dal più giovane dei protagonisti.

When Mitya was two years old, he swallowed his grandmother's sewing needle. For his family, it marks the beginning of the end, the promise of certain death. For Mitya, it is a small metal treasure that guides him from within. As he grows, his life mirrors the uncertain future of his country, which is attempting to rebuild itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union, torn between its past and the promise of modern freedom. Mitya finds himself facing a different sort of ambiguity: Is he a boy, as everyone keeps telling him, or is he not quite a boy, as he often feels?

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.

Two young women attending college decide to have a summer adventure canoeing the rapids-strewn Thelon River that runs 450 miles through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers she trained with at camp, and she wants to share that experience with her friend and lover, Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly, the risk-taker, falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff. She is left injured and comatose, and soon dies.

It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends), Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people. Even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.

After years of severed communication, Justin appears on his sister’s doorstep needing a place to stay. The home he's made for himself has collapsed, as has everything else in his life. When they were children, Willa played the role of her brother’s protector, but now, afraid of the chaos he might bring, she’s reluctant to let him in.

Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other’s lives. James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and '90s San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and metatextual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility.

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?

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.

Phoebe Forde has a new home and new name and is newly thirty. An Irish transplant and PhD candidate, she’s overeducated and underpaid, but she's finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen. Almost three years into her gender transition, Phoebe has learned to move through the world carefully, savoring small moments of joy. After all, a woman without a past can be anyone she wants. But an unexpected visit from her ex-girlfriend Grace brings back memories of Dublin and the life she thought she’d left behind.