Carry Me Down

A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Black Swan Green

David Mitchell · 344 pages

A novel. From hardcover: "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 Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen l

Ellen Foster

Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

Faithful Place

Tana French · 448 pages

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping hisi family’s cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went

The Book of Ruth

Jane Hamilton · 328 pages

"I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it - to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess." Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place. Ruth grows up in the shadow of her

Bastard Out of Carolina

Dorothy Allison · 309 pages

Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts, sees her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell when the stepfather begins abusing her in the 1950s.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle · 282 pages

In this national bestseller and winner of the Booker Prize, Roddy Doyle, author of the "Barrytown Trilogy," takes us to a new level of emotional richness with the story of ten-year-old Padraic Clarke. Witty and poignant--and adored by critics and readers alike--Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha charts the trumphs, indignities, and bewilderment of Paddy as he tries to make sense of his changing world.

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros · 110 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for he

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner · 250 pages

Written in stream-of-consciousness style with multiple narrators, the story follows a journey wherein the family of a dead woman try to transport her body to her birthplace in Mississippi in accordance with her wishes. When a ford across a river is flooded they are forced to take a roundabout route and it becomes a desperate race to complete their mission before the body begins to decompose.

'Tis A Memoir

Frank McCourt · 512 pages

Half His Age

Jennette McCurdy · 262 pages

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want. Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And

My Sweet Orange Tree

Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos · 232 pages

The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

The Good Son

Paul McVeigh · 242 pages

Set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, 'The Good Son' is a funny, frightening and ultimately moving story centred around Mickey Donnelly, a boy struggling to come of age against the backdrop of bitter and brutal surroundings.

When We Were Silent

Fiona McPhillips · 320 pages

Miguel Street

V.S. Naipaul · 176 pages

Canada

Richard Ford · 420 pages

After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.

Foster

Claire Keegan · 108 pages

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house she finds affection she has not known before, and slowly she begins to blossom in their care. But when a secret is suddenly revealed, she realizes how fragile her idyll is.

The Fields

Kevin Maher · 393 pages

Set in 1980s Dublin and London, THE FIELDS tells the vividly evocative story of Jim Finnegan's unfairly interrupted adolescence. I slept right through to the next day. Missed the funeral and everything. Mam said it was just as well. Would've been too upsetting. I think of him now, though. Right at this moment. Here in this kitchen. And I wonder if it could've been different. Dublin, 1984: Ireland

The Cat's Table

Michael Ondaatje · 296 pages

In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table"--as far from the Captain's Table as can be--with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure

We the Animals

Justin Torres · 144 pages

"An exquisite, blistering debut novel. Three brothers tear their way through childhood-- smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn--he's Puerto Rican, she's white--and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmake

Solar Bones

Mike McCormack · 220 pages

"On All Souls Day, the late Marcus Conway returns home. Solar Bones captures in a single relentless sentence the life and death of this rural Irish engineer, and his place in the globally interconnected 21st century. The book takes in local municipal failures and global financial collapse, the quotidian pleasures of family, ancient history and the latest headlines, the living and the dead. A vital

Once & Then

Morris Gleitzman · 304 pages

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer · 326 pages

A new novel by the author of Everything Is Illuminated introduces Oskar Schell, the nine-year-old son of a man killed in the World Trade Center bombing who searches the city for a lock that fits a black key his father left behind. Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tendern