Washoe County Library System

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST •  From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: a hilarious and supremely original novel set in the Hamptons in the 1980s, "a tenderhearted coming-of-age story fused with a sharp look at the intersections of race and class” (The New York Times).
 
Benji Cooper is one of the...

"A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house-a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their...

Witnessing his younger brother's accidental death, teenaged Kevin spends the summer traumatized in his grandfather's Appalachia coal-mining community, which is fighting plans for a massive mountaintop-removal operation.

In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County-to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto-pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. A tale that...

Rebellious, quick-witted Erica Vandross is a sassy seventeen-year-old living with her single mom Laurie and mom's new boyfriend, Bob. When Bob's son, Luke, moves in with the family after a stint in rehab, Erica finds her life overwhelmed. With Luke and her sidekicks, Kala and Claudine, in tow, Erica acts out by exposing a dark secret of high school teacher Will, with perilous results. Their teenage kicks become a catalyst for growing up in unexpected...

"Crackling with energy and intelligence, this debut is the "smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking" (Kamila Shamsie) story of an exceptional teenager coming of age in the shadow of colonialism and communal violence in Nigeria. Andrew Aziza is an unusually smart fifteen-year-old in Kontagora, Nigeria. He lives with his fiercely protective mother, Gloria, and fantasizes obsessively about white girls-especially blondes. When he's not in church, at...

The year is 1985. Rad Miracle is a shy, thirteen-year-old white kid obsessed with two things: Ping-Pong and hip-hop. During his family's annual summer vacation to Ocean City, Maryland, Rad makes a new best friend, experiences his first real crush, becomes the target of rich, racist local bullies, and finds an unexpected mentor in his outcast next-door neighbor. "...entertaining..."--Hollywood Reporter. "A fun-but-slight coming-of-age story..."--Entertainment...

"Jake Whitmore is enjoying a rare bonding moment with his sixteen-year-old son, Kurt, when disaster strikes. They get in a terrible car accident that threatens to derail not only Kurt's chances at college, but his entire future. Jake makes a split-second decision that saves his son from formal punishment, but plunges them both into a world of guilt, lies, and secrecy. Just when Jake thinks he has everything under control, a malevolent outsider comes...

While fourteen year old Duncan is being dragged on a family trip with his mom and her overbearing boyfriend, he finds a gregarious friend at a local water park. The two form a powerful bond as Duncan learns to swim through the challenges of life, love, family and friendship, resulting in a vacation he'll never forget.