People's History of Heaven, Mathangi Subramanian Heaven is a thirty-year-old slum hidden between brand-new, high-rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore. In this tight-knit community, five girls on the cusp of womanhood forge an unbreakable bond. When the local government threatens to demolish their tin shacks in order to build a shopping mall, the girls and their mothers refuse to be erased.
Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson An early morning adventure out stealing horses leads to the tragic death of one boy and a resulting lifetime of guilt and isolation for his friend, in this moving tale about the painful loss of innocence and of traditional ways of life that are gone forever.(Recommended by Sarah Macdonald, synopsis from Powells.com)
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving “Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend’s mom with a baseball and believes–accurately–that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom.” Amazon.com
A Separate Peace, John Knowles Set among a group of boys at a New England boarding school during World War II, it shines a light into the highest heights of beauty and the most profound depths of evil that young men are capable of reaching. At once harrowing and luminous, brooding and bittersweet, A Separate Peace has captured as if in amber the experience of adolescence for millions of readers