bildungsromans

In 1995, Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, attends her freshman year at Harvard University. She forms a deep friendship with Svetlana, a classmate from Servia, and begins an online relationship with Ivan, a mathematics student in Hungary. In a year of self-discovery, Selin learns about first love as she comes to terms with her own destiny.

Teens Ivy Wilde and Marla Klein, both minor celebrities, face major lifestyle changes as pop-star Ivy questions the rampant consumerism required to maintain her image, and fashionista Marla sees first-hand the appalling working conditions that allowed her to be a trend-setter.

Alice Evelyn Davis, seventeen, has generally gotten all she wants from life but when her college of choice rejects her, problems with her best friend arise, and she faces an unexpected loss, her new-found interest in running helps get her through.

As Frankie Lombard grows up, she never stops loving her family's large apple orchard and the many relatives who share the farm with her. But as Frankie readies herself to run the orchard with her father, she notices uncomfortable change seeping into an otherwise constant family dynamic. Possibilities of urbanization, disinheritance, and her own coming adulthood threaten the future Frankie thought was guaranteed, and she wrestles with questions of identity, tradition, and leaving home.

Seventeen-year-old Kevin tries to reinvent himself when he runs away from home and the father he hates, but living with a mysterious uncle and befriending two homeless girls just adds more complications.

Sixteen-year-old Erin's life is fairly normal until she learns that her mother has breast cancer and she, too, may carry a mutated gene, so amid high school dramas including betrayal by her best friend, she must consider preemptive surgery to guarantee she will not be stricken.

Four individuals living in London navigate the everyday experiences that come their way, gradually discovering the impact of social class on their relationships and discovering where their lives are destined to end up.

Sixteen-year-old Abby Lipman is on track to win the state swim championships and qualify for the Olympic trials when a fainting incident at a swim meet leads to the diagnosis of a deadly heart condition and forces her to discover who she is without the one thing that has defined her entire life.

Skylar Evans, a Creek View girl who, if she is a typical Creek View girl, has a future of graveyard shifts and unwed pregnancies. She is not typical, and is set to go to art school at the end of summer--that is, until her mother loses her job. Taking a job at Paradise motel off California's Highway 99, Skylar meets Josh, a young war veteran who has lost his confidence. Friendship blossoms, and then something deeper, but it may not last.

A month before graduation, Rusty, Leonie, Beau, and Leonie's dog take a road trip to the wilds of Alaska to find Rusty's estranged father.