Coming of Age

Fiction

Award-Winning Coming-Of-Age Story Set Amidst China’s Cultural Revolution

George Lee’s debut novel Dancing in the River (Guernica Editions) offers a rare and intimate view into the coming of age of a young boy in a sleepy mountain village along the Yangtze River, during and after China’s Cultural Revolution. From grammar school through college, Little Bright maneuvers a turbulent…

Anne Eliot FeldmanNovember 18, 2022

Fiction Recommended

Ode to Brooklyn is an Unflinching Account of Addiction and Coming-of-Age

As a kid, you barely notice them. Maybe it’s at a restaurant. Maybe it’s in your own basement, where your parents have set up a bar in the downstairs game room. It’s dozens of bottles of liquor reflecting off mirrors – in different shapes, sizes and colors. “I saw them…

Jim AlkonOctober 25, 2023

Fiction Fiction - Featured Recommended

Literary Journey of Self-Discovery Shows the Making of a Man

It’s a bold and gutsy move to open a book with a description of two dead men, their bodies mangled at the bottom of a construction pit, blood running from their mouths and stiffening into maroon jelly. “If you have to, blame me for wanting to feel the rush that…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 31, 2022

Fiction Recommended

Jewish Coming-of-Age Navigates Friendship, Racial Prejudice & Self-Discovery

Adam Unrehearsed (Wicked Son) is a captivating coming-of-age novel set in Flushing, New York, during the early 1970s. Skillfully crafted by co-host of TLV1’s The Promised Podcast, Don Futterman, the story revolves around Adam Miller, a Jewish boy on the brink of his bar mitzvah, who is navigating the fragility and…

Natalia KavaleNovember 14, 2023

Podcasts

Writers, Ink Podcast: Khashayar J. Khabushani on Why You’re Not a Real Writer Until You’ve Cried Over a Typewriter (while passing through TSA)

BookTrib is proud to present to our readers the Writers, Ink podcast, a show about the business of writing. J.K. Rowling was nearly homeless when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. Stephen King penned Carrie on a small desk wedged between a washer and dryer. James Patterson worked in advertising and…

Writers, InkSeptember 18, 2023

Book Club Network Fiction Fiction - Featured

Video Game Designers Soar to Fame in Story of Love, Redemption and Identity

The charm and intensity of the Barnes and Noble and Jimmy Fallon Book Club Pick, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf) by Gabrielle Zevin will sneak up on you unsuspectedly and before you know it, you will be deep into a book about the coming of age of three young people…

Jennifer BlankfeinAugust 31, 2022

Fiction

Novella Imagines Mussolini’s Role in Libyan Family’s Life

On the cusp of the Second World War, Mussolini held Libya in the grips of his fascist rule. His dictatorship aimed to colonize the country which sustained anti-capitalist and anti-fascist sentiments. Salah El Moncef’s Benghazi (Penelope Books) is a fictionalized version of this historical event, told from the perspective of…

Megan BeauregardDecember 13, 2022

Children's Books Children's Books - Featured Fiction Recommended

Unlikely Friends Fight to Protect Their Home in Fairy Adventure

“Home…. How can one little word have so many meanings?” For Mirror, a 5-inch-tall, frightfully fierce and loyal young fairy, home begins with showing up in Somewhere, a fairy community said to be hidden in the natural beauty and grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. Mirror never speaks of her past,…

BookTribDecember 16, 2022

Audiobooks Fiction Listicles Listicles - Featured Romance Thrillers

Wrap Up The Summer with These 10 August Audiobooks

Every month, AudioFile Magazine reviewers and editors select the best new audiobooks just for BookTrib’s readers. Get ready for the last beach days of the season, back-to-school preparation and cooler days ahead with these August picks! This story appears through BookTrib’s…

AudioFileSeptember 2, 2022

Nonfiction Nonfiction - Featured

Middle East Meets West With Ambitious Woman’s Cross-Cultural Upbringing in Saudi Arabia

Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson spent much of her young life with a foot in two different worlds, belonging to one culture that restricted her individual freedoms and to another that promised more to its women than marriage, children and subservience to men, including their own sons. A strong-willed, sensitive and highly creative…

Chelsea CicconeMay 24, 2022

Nonfiction

Political Groundbreaking Governor’s Journey

Timing is everything, whether in the political arena or the literary arena. The most significant political decision I ever had to make was whether and when to run for governor of Vermont after Gov. Richard Snelling announced he would not run for another term, leaving an open seat. I was…

Madeleine KuninNovember 23, 2018

Fiction Young Adult

Shape-Shifting Rites of Passage Take a Boy “Beyond Dark Waters”

Nine-year-old Ben isn’t necessarily a bad kid. He just does things that aren’t very good. He torments his younger sister Sophie, has no regard for the property of others, and is otherwise willful and inconsiderate. His mother sends him to his grandfather’s house one day as punishment, and Ben isn’t…

David ToddMay 19, 2021

Fiction Fiction - Featured

Sailors Who Turn Up at “Cape Henry House” Create Wild and Lasting Memories

Cape Henry House by Jolly Walker Bittick, based on a true coming of age story, follows 21-year-old Petty Officer Third Class Bosner over a three-week period during his own carefree days of youth. It's 2008. Bosner is a helicopter greaser in the U.S. Navy working long hours and looking to…

Barbara WilkovMay 18, 2022

Children's Books Children's Books - Featured

Even Conflict Won’t Lessen the Love Between These Two Sisters

From classics like Little Women to Ramona and Beezus, the relationship between sisters has always been explored and celebrated in children’s literature. Maddie and Mabel (Kind World Publishing) is no exception. Kari Allen weaves together scenes of sisterly love, conversations, arguments and playtime to portray a pair of siblings that…

Julianna GoldflussMarch 22, 2022

Children's Books

Trevor Noah’s Memoir Adapted for Young Readers

Host of the "The Daily Show," Trevor Noah, has become a household name, revered for his quick wit and insightful comedy on current affairs. Until the publication of his memoir, much less commonly known was Noah's perilous childhood in South Africa. His own birth as a child of mixed races…

Rebecca ProulxApril 12, 2019

Business Nonfiction

Steve Jobs’ Daughter Finds Her Own Voice in New Memoir

If you haven’t read Lisa Brennan-Job’s memoir “Small Fry” (Grove Press) yet, you will likely hear about it because Lisa’s father was Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. But this is not a biography of Steve Jobs. Rather, it is a portrait of growing up in California in the eighties and…

Just The Right Book PodcastNovember 23, 2018