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‘ Mickey: Surviving Salvation' is the story of a boy shaped by abandonment and abuse, who returns to his estranged mother at age 12 and has to figure out how to survive in her new life. Based on the author' s real-life childhood, Mickey tries to find his place amidst poverty, suffering and religious self-righteousness in the 1950' s. From Chicago to Mormon country in Ogden, Utah, where religious intolerance strikes deep,...
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Pilgrimage and road-trip of unusual dimensions.
Follow me, Jonny Rowe, on a wild goose-chase from Ireland to the USA with my American grandfather's remains in my red birthday balloon. I use 'remains' in the loosest sense of the word: my grandfather, 45, puffed his last breaths of air into my birthday balloon before suffering a massive heart attack right there at my birthday party which becomes his death day party.
Feeling responsible for 45's death,...
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His grandfather was a cabinet maker. The rarely smiling old man who now had trouble walking and whose fingers struck the young boy as gnarled, helpless roots of some moving-about-the-house-with-difficulty tree.The grumpy old man who had trouble chewing most of his food for lack of teeth and who now and then drooled soup on his shirt at table and then pretended that he had not, even after mother would hand him a napkin, not even a thank you.This old...
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A young girl at a Connecticut private school falls in love with her English teacher in this turbulent and tender first novel by the winner of the Yale University Willet Prize.
Flanders Point is a spit of land on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, the site of a small, financially troubled girls' prep school called Haddam. To this school comes Charlotte Delafield, a gawky teen hoping to surmount the aftermath of her parents' difficult divorce,...
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Flowers Are Better Than Bullets will whisk you away on an emotional journey of life, love, and loss set against the tumultuous backdrop of the late '60s and early '70s.
Follow Johnny, a teenager from Lima, Ohio, as he navigates the complexities of love, the awakening of sexuality, and the potent drive to stand by his convictions. Johnny carves a new path away from an oppressive home and the looming military draft by seeking refuge at Kent State...
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The Big Green Tent epitomizes what we think of when we imagine the classic Russian novel.
With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya's remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys-an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting...
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We walk on fire or air, so Daddy liked to say. Basement floors too hot to touch. Steaming green lawns in the dead of winter. Sinkholes, quick and sudden, plunging open at your feet.
The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced eleven-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud...
8) Two Hours
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"Someone rang my husband. Your wife is not well, the person said. Your wife is not well."
When Clara's parents transplant her from Paris to New York at the age of sixteen, a fleeting encounter with a young man seems, for a brief period, to open up new possibilities. As she strives to fulfil her vocation as a writer, and as she struggles in later years with the cumulative constraints of an unhappy marriage, Clara's imagination is strangely haunted...
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David Grossman's Someone to Run With tells the story of a lost dog, and the discovery of first love on the streets of Jerusalem, portrayed here with a gritty realism that is as fresh as it is compelling.
When awkward and painfully shy sixteen-year-old Assaf is asked to find the owner of a stray yellow lab, he begins a quest that will bring him into contact with street kids and criminals, and a talented young singer, Tamar, engaged on her own mission:...
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Graceland is a dazzling debut by a singular new talent
The sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria, provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis, a teenage Elvis impersonator hoping to make his way out of the ghetto. Broke, beset by floods, and beatings by his alcoholic father, and with no job opportunities in sight, Elvis is tempted by a life of crime. Thus begins his odyssey into the dangerous underworld of Lagos, guided by his friend...
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Growing up motherless in 1980's Miami Beach, Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha get by with their charismatic and capricious father, • Jackson Jones. When a small windfall relocates them to a condemned mansion on the water, the siblings are forbidden traditional schooling and left to live off the land. As Jackson uses their new home to create a communal cult, the siblings are forced to raise themselves in a carefree, chaotic oasis. Living...
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WINNER OF THE LESLIE BRADSHAW AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE
WINNER OF THE BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
Dave is fourteen years old, eager, and headlong. He is about to start high school, which is scary and alluring. Martin is a pine marten, a small, muscled hunter of the deep woods. He is about to leave home for the first time, which is scary and thrilling. Both of these wild animals are setting off on adventures on their native Mount...
13) Fade
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Michael is dismayed to learn that a colleague's step-daughter has committed suicide. Michael had had thoughts of asking her out but felt the age difference was too great. Against all odds, Michael sets forth to bring Anna back by dating her ghost. Anna's mom Mandy is terrified but hopeful, but Anna's step-dad Tom is angry and unsure of Michael's intention. Michael takes Anna out for coffee, out for dinner, and for walks. As time passes, Anna becomes...
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Joe College is Tom Perrotta's warmest and funniest fiction yet, a comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education and food service.
For many college students, Spring Break means fun and sun in Florida. For Danny, a Yale junior, it means two weeks behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck, which plies the parking lots of office parks in central New Jersey.
But Danny can use the time behind the coffee urn to try...
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FLEDGLING FANTASIES is a collection of four fresh flash fiction stories by Carlos Stanfield. Within you'll find"Housewarming," the story of a young man named Michael moving into his first house. His parents send him an unexpected gift. How can Michael deal with the madcap consequences?"Don't Tap The Glass" features a brusque brunch between Ron and Karren as they acclimate to new surroundings. Ron tries to look at the upsides of their new living arrangement,...
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Vivian has more in common with her nemesis than she wants to believe. Waxwood, 1900: For Vivian Alderdice, the twentieth century begins with a new start. Now a working woman and progressive reformer, she's forsaken Nob Hill for the more modest Waxwood. She's laid Penelope Alderdice's specter to rest at last. Granted, her life isn't the one she was born into. Instead of a Nob Hill socialite, she sells strawberry sodas at her friend's drugstore and...
17) Flip City
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Flip City is the story of fifteen-year-old child model, James Daniel Ross, as he comes of age in 1970-a time of free love, dead rock stars, and serial killers. Escaping the psychiatric facility where his affluent father has placed him, James trades its restraints, prescription meds, and therapists, for freedom, illicit drugs, and the friendship of street kids surviving in the psychedelic shadows of Old Town, Chicago. But when one friend goes missing,...
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A holiday for six friends to a faraway, exotic place turns awry when one of them falls hopelessly in love with a mysterious young man whom everyone likes – except Angus! What is Angus to do when Isabella, the only girl he has a crush on, is falling head over heels for a guy whose name she doesn't even know – right before his very eyes? Nothing! Angus may be able to disarm a dangerous man who unleashes deadly mayhem at a crowded music festival...
19) Birth
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Step into the mesmerizing world of "Birth," the debut novel by Manchester-based poet, podcaster, and ambient musician, Andy N.Delve deep into the psyche of a young writer as this extraordinary tale offers a poetic, sad, and often hilarious portrait of his coming-of-age journey as his creativity is almost literally dragged out of him into the beginning of his journey as a poet, into fronting a five-piece acoustic band, and so much more. In this captivating...
20) Abandoned
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Mary is a timid young girl who lives in the coastal town of Hampton, California. Her overprotective mother keeps her in the attic, safe from ghosts and monsters. Mary's father disappeared, and apparently so did someone named Laura who no one likes to talk about. Mary used to be content with being kept in the dark . . . until an abandoned rabbit gives her the courage to defy her family. Of course, courage inevitably leads to trouble. Her cruel brother...
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