Rosary, California, is not an easy place to grow up, particularly without a mom. So cut off from the rest of the world that even the Internet is blocked, Rosary is a town run by evangelicals but named by Catholics (and the evangelicals aren't particularly happy about that). It's a town on very formal relations with its neighbors, one that doesn't have much traffic in or out and that boasts an oil refinery as well as a fairly sizable population of...

The coming-of-age story of J, who is growing up in a household dominated by her alcoholic father and complicit mother. Her older brother is her only ally and she images their escape into a better life. But when he disappears, J turns to her computer screen for comfort as she stumbles into adulthood.

"The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the DMZ in Korea that will change his life forever--and, ultimately, to love. Rann falls for the beautiful and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, who lives in Paris with her Chinese father and has no contact with her American mother,...

The story of a motherless girl named Faith and her family and close friends, all of whom are determined to see her live a happy life

A wrenching and layered debut novel about a gay teen's coming-of-age in the aftermath of his father's suicide. Colin's teenage sister teases him mercilessly, his autistic brother lashes out at him, and he has a crush on his best friend, Andy. When his father commits suicide Diane, his mother, seeks solace in therapy. Awash in guilt, Colin casts about for someone to confide in: first his estranged grandfather, then a predatory science teacher. But...

How does one remember a world that literally no longer exists? How do the moral imperatives to do so correspond to the personal needs that make it possible? Told from the point-of-view of Marta Eisenstein Lane on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, Barren Island is the story of a factory island in New York's Jamaica Bay, where the city's dead horses and other large animals were rendered into glue and fertilizer from the mid-nineteenth century...

A girl who would save her mentally ill artist father from succumbing to the pressures of fame follows clues in the illustrations of his remarkable children's book before uncovering an astonishing family secret.

"In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake -- if it was a mistake -- until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy, and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn't feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood, where the turbulence of life seems to offer no cure for the emptiness. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support...

The Kid doesn't know where her parents are. They left with a promise to come back months ago, and now their seventeen-year-old daughter is stranded on Swan Island. Swan isn't just any island; it is home to an eccentric old age separatist community who have shunned life on the mainland for a haven which is rapidly sinking into the ocean. The Kid's arrival threatens to burst the idyllic bubble that the elderly residents have so carefully constructed...

"Praise for Rikki Ducornet:"Linguistically explosive. one of the most interesting American writers around."--The Nation"Ducornet--surrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at times--is one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel...