Coming of Age Books for Adult Readers

Author	J.K. Rowling
ISBN	0439249546

The exciting tales of Harry Potter, the young wizard-in-training, have taken the world by storm, and fans just can't get enough of the magical world of Hogwarts and beyond. If you buy one of the Harry Potter books, we guarantee you'll want the next...and the next...and the next -- so why not have them all,...

Author	Eldonna Edwards
ISBN	1496712862

Set in a small Midwest town in the late 1960s and helmed by an unforgettable young protagonist--compassionate, uncannily wise Grace--This I Know is a luminous coming-of-age story from an astonishing new voice.

Eleven-year-old Grace Carter has a talent for hiding things. She's had plenty...

Author	Dale M. Kushner
ISBN	1455519758

Dale M. Kushner's novel The Conditions of Love traces the journey of a girl from childhood to adulthood as she reckons with her parents' abandonment, her need to break from society's limitations, and her overwhelming desire for spiritual and erotic love. In 1953, ten-year-old Eunice lives in the backwaters...

Author	Dorothy Allison
ISBN	0452287057

Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family—a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard-drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright,...

Author	Maya Angelou
ISBN	0553279378

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many...

Author	Carole Geithner
ISBN	0545234999

A stunning debut about one girl's journey through loss and grief. Corinna's world is crushed after her mother dies of cancer. How does she get through the funeral, trays of ziti, a father who can't communicate, the first day of school, Mother's Day, people who don't know what to say, and the entire eighth-grade...

Author	Anne McCaffrey
ISBN	0345341678

Yes by all means, judge a book set in a feudalistic world surrounded by dragon on your personal interpretation of feminism on Earth circa 2013. This makes no sense to me. If you're going to read a book I think you should read a book and suspend your sense of self to really get a feel for the world that's being...

Author	David Mitchell
ISBN	0812974018

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying...

Author	Susan Coolidge
ISBN	0543904709

Twelve-year-old Katy is constantly making and quickly breaking resolutions about how she will change her ways and treat others, especially her five younger brothers and sisters, with more respect and compassion. When Katy meets her Cousin Helen, an invalid, Katy is awed by her kindness, prettiness,...

Author	Robert Wilder
ISBN	0997020709

A Booklist Best Young Adult Book of 2016 and Top 10 Romance for Youth.

Being a teenager is hard enough without your mother in rehab and your slightly inept stepfather doing his best not to screw things up. But at least Coy has Monroe. Coy is a quirky teenage boy and his best friend, Monroe, is a girl...

Author	Anne McCaffrey
ISBN	0345480309

For millions of readers the world over, the name Pern is magical, conjuring up grand vistas of a distant planet whose blue skies are patrolled by brave dragons and their noble riders, a paradise threatened by the periodic fall of deadly Thread. But not all dangers descend from the skies. Now, in their...

Author

Anne McCaffrey

A book doesn't have to be Great Literature or even particularly good to appear on my "formative fiction" shelf, it just has to be a book with a meaning that changed me or helped me to understand myself and the world in a new way. Fortunately, Dragonsong is also a very good book of its type.

The best...

Author	John Irving
ISBN	0552135399

Eleven-year-old Owen Meany, playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire, hits a foul ball and kills his best friend's mother. Owen doesn't believe in accidents; he believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul is both extraordinary and terrifying....

Author	Richard Bachman
ISBN	0451196716

If this book does not make you feel physical pain, I don't know what will.

This isn't a book about killer clowns or haunted hotels. It's not a Hunger Games type of book, despite the "game show" element of the Long Walk, nor is it a world attached to any tower, Dark or not. This book is in-your-face...

Author	Miriam Toews
ISBN	1582433224

In this stunning coming-of-age novel, award-winner Miriam Toews balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty, beleaguered teenager whose family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity.

"Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing," Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning...

Author	Rebecca Walker
ISBN	1573229075

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced,...

Author	Julie Anne Peters
ISBN	0316011274

A groundbreaking novel about a transgender teen, selected as a National Book Award Finalist!
Regan's brother Liam can't stand the person he is during the day. Like the moon from whom Liam has chosen his female name, his true self, Luna, only reveals herself at night. In the secrecy of his basement...