Listen to Best Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Coming of Age

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/521254 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Strange Children

Author: Sadie Hoagland

Narrator: Amy Melissa Bentley

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 18 minutes

Release date: July 20, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

In a polygamist commune in the desert, a fourteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl fall in love and consummate that love, breaking religious law. They are caught, and a year later, she gives birth to his father's child while the boy commits murder four hundred miles away—a crime that will slowly unravel the community. Told by eight adolescent narrators, this is a story of how people use faith to justify cruelty, and how redemption can come from unexpected places. Though seemingly powerless in the face of their fundamentalist religion, these 'strange children' shift into the central framework of their world as they come of age.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551095 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: [German] - Crazy (Ungekürzt)

Author: Benjamin Lebert

Narrator: Tim Gössler

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 5 hours 0 minutes

Release date: July 19, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

Mit den Worten 'Hallo Leute. Mein Name ist Benjamin Lebert. Ich bin 16 Jahre alt, und ich bin ein Krüppel' stellt sich Benni seinen neuen Mitschülern im Internat vor. Und genauso schnörkellos, unverkrampft und direkt erzählt er seine Geschichte vom Leben, Lieben und Leiden eines 16-Jährigen. 'Crazy' wurde zum Kultbuch einer ganzen Generation, ein Weltbestseller, der mit Robert Stadlober in der Hauptrolle verfilmt wurde.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/531524 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: [Spanish] - Shantaram [unabridged audiobook]

Author: Gregory David Roberts

Narrator: Sergio Bustos De La Tijera

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 53 hours 45 minutes

Release date: July 13, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 12

Ratings of Narrator: 2.5 of Total 2

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

'Me tomó mucho tiempo y a la mayor parte del mundo aprender lo que sé sobre el amor y el destino y las decisiones que tomamos, pero el corazón de esto me llegó en un instante, mientras estaba encadenado a una pared y siendo torturado'. Así comienza esta épica e hipnotizante primera novela de Gregory David Roberts, ambientada en el inframundo de la bombay contemporánea. Shantaram es narrado por Lin, un convicto fugado con un pasaporte falso que huye de la prisión de máxima seguridad en Australia por las calles llenas de una ciudad donde puede desaparecer. Acompañados por su guía y fiel amigo, Prabaker,los dos entran en la sociedad oculta de mendigas y gángsters de Bombay, prostitutas y hombres santos, soldados y actores, e indios y exiliados de otros países, que buscan en este lugar notable lo que no pueden encontrar en otros lugares. Como un hombre cazado sin hogar, familia o identidad, Lin busca amor y significado mientras dirige una clínica en uno de los barrios pobres de la ciudad, y sirve a su aprendizaje en las artes oscuras de la mafia de Bombay. La búsqueda lo lleva a la guerra, la tortura en prisión, el asesinato y una serie de traiciones enigmáticas y sangrientas. Las claves para desentrañar los misterios e intrigas que unen a Lin están en manos de dos personas. El primero es Khader Khan: padrino de la mafia, criminal-filósofo-santo, y mentor de Lin en el inframundo de la Ciudad Dorada. La segunda es Karla: escurridiza, peligrosa y hermosa, cuyas pasiones son impulsadas por secretos que la atormentan y sin embargo le dan un poder terrible. Barrios marginales ardientes y hoteles de cinco estrellas, amor romántico y agonías carceleras, guerras criminales y películas de Bollywood, gurús espirituales y guerrilleros muyahidines esta gran novela tiene el mundo de la experiencia humana a su alcance, y un amor apasionado por la India en el corazón. Basado en la vida del autor, es en cualquier medida el debut de una voz extraordinaria en la literatura.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/514345 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Comfort of Monsters: A Novel

Author: Willa C. Richards

Narrator: Stacey Glemboski

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 11 hours 22 minutes

Release date: July 13, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

''A riveting page-turner that begs to be read quickly, compulsively. But page by page, this electrifying debut by Willa Richards weaves an increasingly complicated and dark tale of guilt, fury, and the danger of building stories on that shakiest of foundations, memory.'' —Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine Set in Milwaukee during the “Dahmer summer” of 1991, a remarkable debut novel for fans of Mary Gaitskill and Gillian Flynn about two sisters—one who disappears, and one who is left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath. In the summer of 1991, a teenage girl named Dee McBride vanished in the city of Milwaukee. Nearly thirty years later, her sister, Peg, is still haunted by her sister's disappearance. Their mother, on her deathbed, is desperate to find out what happened to Dee so the family hires a psychic to help find Dee’s body and bring them some semblance of peace.  The appearance of the psychic plunges Peg back to the past, to those final carefree months when she last saw Dee—the summer the Journal Sentinel called “the deadliest . . . in the history of Milwaukee.” Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes dominated the headlines and overwhelmed local law enforcement. The disappearance of one girl was easily overlooked. Peg’s hazy recollections are far from easy for her to interpret, assess, or even keep clear in her mind. And now digging deep into her memory raises doubts and difficult—even terrifying—questions. Was there anything Peg could have done to prevent Dee’s disappearance? Who was really to blame for the family's loss? How often are our memories altered by the very act of voicing them? And what does it mean to bear witness in a world where even our own stories are inherently suspect? A heartbreaking page-turner, Willa C. Richards’s novel is the story of a broken family looking for answers in the face of the unknown, and asks us to reconsider the power and truth of memory.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/489205 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Count the Ways: A Novel

Author: Joyce Maynard

Narrator: Joyce Maynard

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 15 hours 16 minutes

Release date: July 13, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 9

Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family—from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family. Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.  Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours. A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/527616 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Mona at Sea

Author: Elizabeth Gonzalez James

Narrator: Aida Reluzco

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 2 minutes

Release date: July 8, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling-bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling. She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Seven months out of college, she’s desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession. When her reaction to losing her job goes viral and she is publicly branded the Sad Millennial, she begins a downward spiral into self-pity, bitterness, and late-night drunken binges on cat videos. She's the sort who says exactly the right thing at absolutely the wrong moments, seeing the world through a cynic's eyes. In suburban Tucson amid the financial and social malaise of the early 2000s, thirty-three-year-old Mona must not only find a job but also quickly learn to navigate the complexities of adult relationships within the black hole of her parents' shattering marriage. At her mother's urging, she grudgingly joins a support group for job seekers, and she slowly begins to see that all is not lost—and that perhaps losing the job on Wall Street was a blessing in disguise. She might even learn what it is she finds meaningful in life. The only question is whether or not she’ll be brave enough to go after it.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/526697 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: If It Rains

Author: Jennifer L. Wright

Narrator: Sarah Zimmerman

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 36 minutes

Release date: July 6, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 3

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

A story of resilience and redemption set against one of America’s defining moments―the Dust Bowl. It’s 1935 in Oklahoma, and lives are determined by the dust. Fourteen-year-old Kathryn Baile, a spitfire born with a severe clubfoot, is coming of age in desperate times. Once her beloved older sister marries, Kathryn’s only comfort comes in the well-worn pages of her favorite book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then Kathryn’s father decides to relocate to Indianapolis, and only the promise of a surgery to finally make her “normal” convinces Kathryn to leave Oklahoma behind. But disaster strikes along the way, and Kathryn must rely on her grit and the ragged companions she meets on the road if she is to complete her journey. Back in Boise City, Melissa Baile Mayfield is the newest member of the wealthiest family in all of Cimarron County. In spite of her poor, rural upbringing, Melissa has just married the town’s most eligible bachelor and is determined to be everything her husband―and her new social class―expects her to be. But as the drought tightens its grip, Henry’s true colors are revealed. Melissa covers her bruises with expensive new makeup and struggles to reconcile her affluent life with that of her starving neighbors. Haunted by the injustice and broken by Henry’s refusal to help, Melissa secretly defies her husband, risking her life to follow God’s leading. Two sisters, struggling against unspeakable hardship, discover that even in their darkest times, they are still united in spirit, and God is still with them, drawing them home.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/495123 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: All Our Shimmering Skies: A Novel

Author: Trent Dalton

Narrator: Ruby Rees

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 15 hours 2 minutes

Release date: July 6, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

From the internationally bestselling and beloved author of the critically acclaimed Boy Swallows Universe, a mesmerizing, uplifting novel of adventure and unlikely friendships in World War II Australia—calling to mind The Wizard of Oz as directed by Baz Luhrmann. Darwin, 1942. As Japanese bombs rain down on her hometown, newly orphaned Molly Hook looks to the skies and runs for her life. Inside a duffel bag, she carries a stone heart and a map that will lead her to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer whom she believes cursed her family. Accompanying her are the most unlikely traveling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress, and Yukio, a Japanese fighter pilot who’s abandoned his post.  With messages from the skies above to guide them towards treasure, but foes close on their trail, the trio will encounter the beauty and vastness of the Northern Territory and survive in ways they never thought possible.  A story about the gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth, and secrets we bury inside ourselves, Trent Dalton’s brilliantly imagined novel is an odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue heavens. It is a love letter to Australia and an ode to the art of looking up—a buoyant and magical tale, filled to the brim with warmth, wit, and wonder.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/532798 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man

Author: Stephen Dedalus

Narrator: Geoffrey Giuliano And The Icon Ensemble

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 8 minutes

Release date: July 4, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. As a young boy, Stephen's Catholic faith and Irish nationality heavily influence him. He attends a strict religious boarding school called Clongowes Wood College. At first, Stephen is lonely and homesick at the school, but as time passes he finds his place among the other boys. He enjoys his visits home, even though family tensions run high after the death of the Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. This sensitive subject becomes the topic of a furious, politically charged argument over the family's Christmas dinner. This is James Joyce's first novel, the semi-autobiographical story of a young Irish boy who struggles with family, country, and religion to become an artist and a man. Produced by Macc Kay Production executive Avalon Giuliano ICON Intern Eden Garret Giuliano ©2021 Eden Garret Giuliano (P) 2021 Eden Garret Giuliano Geoffrey Giuliano is the author of over thirty internationally bestselling biographies, including the London Sunday Times bestseller 'Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney' and 'Dark Horse: The Private Life of George Harrison'. He can be heard on the Westwood One Radio Network and has written and produced over seven hundred original spoken word albums and video documentaries on various aspects of popular culture. In addition, Giuliano is an occasional lecturer at Northwestern University. He is also a well-known movie actor in such films as 'Mechanic Resurrection and the 'Scorpion King' series, among many. Geoffrey is a near lifelong student of Bhakti (Devotional) Yoga and an ardent animal rights advocate. He makes his home with his son Eden in Bangkok and Vrndavana, and Jaipur India.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/509144 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Lady Sunshine: A Novel

Author: Amy Mason Doan

Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

Release date: June 29, 2021

Genres: Coming of Age

Publisher's Summary:

“A delicious daydream of a book.” —Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers “With lyrical writing and a page-turning plot, this sun-dappled book has it all.” —Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party ONE ICONIC FAMILY. ONE SUMMER OF SECRETS. THE DAZZLING SPIRIT OF 1970S CALIFORNIA. For Jackie Pierce, everything changed the summer of 1979, when she spent three months of infinite freedom at her bohemian uncle’s sprawling estate on the California coast. As musicians, artists, and free spirits gathered at The Sandcastle for the season in pursuit of inspiration and communal living, Jackie and her cousin Willa fell into a fast friendship, testing their limits along the rocky beach and in the wild woods... until the summer abruptly ended in tragedy, and Willa silently slipped away into the night. Twenty years later, Jackie unexpectedly inherits The Sandcastle and returns to the iconic estate for a short visit to ready it for sale. But she reluctantly extends her stay when she learns that, before her death, her estranged aunt had promised an up-and-coming producer he could record a tribute album to her late uncle at the property’s studio. As her musical guests bring the place to life again with their sun-drenched beach days and late-night bonfires, Jackie begins to notice startling parallels to that summer long ago. And when a piece of the past resurfaces and sparks new questions about Willa’s disappearance, Jackie must discover if the dark secret she’s kept ever since is even the truth at all. *Don't miss Amy Mason Doan's next novel, The California Dreamers, available now to preorder! Also by Amy Mason Doan: - The California Dreamers - Summer Hours - The Summer List