Coming of Age

Follow Oak, a young man on a journey to find himself amid the echoes of his past. Set against the backdrop of a world where nature holds secrets and mysteries unfold, Oak's adventure is one of discovery, identity, and the search for a place to call home. Along the way, he encounters unexpected friends and challenges, each bringing him closer to the truths about his family and himself.

Like many teenagers, there's a lot about Daniel Meadows' life that's out of his control. For example, having to start in a new school district for his freshman year of high school thanks to his dad's new job. Inside the realm of his control, however, is the decision to try a brand-new sport purely to impress a girl. But the day of tennis tryouts proves far more fateful than Dan ever could have imagined, when a failed attempt by Truck-kun and the powers that be to kill him and transport his consciousness to a fantasy realm leaves him on Earth with miraculous abilities instead.

Freakishly smart. That’s the unwelcome box Ru Evans is put into for life. After all, she taught herself Euclidean geometry at age seven, has an eidetic memory, and is about to enter college at thirteen years old. Boarding at a house near campus 150 miles from home, Ru meets seventeen-year-old Gabriel, an outsider himself who, like Ru, has trouble making friends—until they form a fast sibling-like bond. Finding a relatable someone in the world to talk to is a first for both of them.

A man is found dead, alone in an old motel room at the start of a new year. What at first seems to be a heart attack soon turns out to be so much more, a fate rooted in several decades and spanning multiple countries. A fate that Detective James Branson now has to sort out.

In Grand Slams, Timothy Gager shares the touching stories of characters who so often set are aside as window dressing in other novels. Here, Gager gives them the full spotlight: waitress, line order cook, knock around guy, each patron comes alive as fully rounded, damaged, loving people. Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Gager's book offers us both myth and realism, hand in hand.

Amarl is a hizeen, a half-spirit, and the first of his kind ever to enter Askula Academy, whether he wants to or not. There, he joins the other novices seeking to become ithtaru, the supernatural defenders of the Umpratan Empire. He'll learn the arts of battle and magic, and the secret to the powerful abilities that make ithtaru an invincible force.

The Pipeline series follows activist Amy Bryant and a group of her friends as they battle against corporate greed and its effects on our planet. They will face many challenges along the way.

Gracie Howard, at eleven, tragically lost her parents, sister, and her hand. Older now, and on the cusp of winning a national ice cream contest, she still fights nightmares. Never has she known someone who truly understands her heartache—until she meets Kage. Tossed out the doors of a Greyhound bus in front of her grandfather's ice cream shop, Kage, nineteen and homeless, is working his way to Louisville to meet his sister for the first time. Outsiders aren't welcome in the tiny Kentucky town of Ridgewood, nor is Kage's interest in Gracie.

Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again. It’s easier said than done.

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

Written with a “formal playfulness [that] suggests Kundera with A.D.D.” (Village Voice), Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow became an underground cult classic upon its 2012 release. In a radical reimagining of the minotaur myth, a narrator named Georgi meanders through the past to find the melancholy child at the center of it all. Spanning from antiquity to the Anthropocene, he catalogs curious instances of abandonment, recounts scenes of a turbulent boyhood in 1970s Bulgari.

Lee knows she’s the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there’s no doubt she’ll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended. In this new role, Lee’s task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika.

From the outside, Isabel doesn’t seem to have much going on. It’s the summer after college graduation, and she’s moved back to her hometown, where she spends her days house-sitting, babysitting, working the front desk at a yoga studio, and hanging out with her friend Ellie. But on the inside, Isabel’s mind is always running, always analyzing, and right now, she’s trying hard to not let her thoughts give weight to boys. So when Isabel spots three baby skunks in the yard, their presence is not only a strangely thrilling break from the expected, it feels like a fortuitous sign from the universe.

Sebastián lived a childhood of privilege in Mexico City. Now in his twenties, he has a degree from Yale, an American girlfriend, and a slot in the University of Iowa's MFA program. But Sebastián's life is shaken by the Trump administration's restrictions on immigrants, his mother's terminal cancer, the cracks in his relationship, and his father's forced resignation at the hands of Mexico's new president. As he struggles through the Trump and Lopez Obrador years, Sebastián must confront his father's role in the Mexican drug war and navigate his whiteness in Mexican contexts.

It is 1936, and in the small Italian city of Monza, on the pebbled bank of the Lambro, two frantic girls scramble to bury a body—the dead son of the city's most prominent fascist. Soon, they will find their fierce friendship put to the ultimate test. A year earlier, Francesca Strada, the well-mannered daughter of a bourgeois family, dreams of a life beyond provincial conformity. From afar she spies on Maddalena, the town’s rebellious outcast—whom neighbors call “the Cursed One”—and whose indomitable spirit fascinates her.