International Students Guide: Coming-Of-Age

A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.

After being orphaned, Kira is assigned to restore The Singer’s robe. She becomes friends with Thomas the Carver and Jo, the future Singer, two other orphans who also must work for the Council. They live in luxury while the rest of the villagers, including Kira’s little friend Matt, eke out a not-so-great existence. As time goes on Kira begins to suspect, and then know, that things aren’t quite what they seem. In Gathering Blue Lois Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve, and what could be considered valuable.

Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people, are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive "theory of mind" by which most of us sense what's going on in other people's heads. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. An eye-opening work with a unique and compelling literary voice.

The story begins with an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum that kills narrator Theo Decker's beloved mother and results in his unlikely possession of a Dutch masterwork called The Goldfinch. Shootouts, gangsters, pillowcases, storage lockers, and the black market for art all play parts in the ensuing life of the painting in 13-year-old Theo's care. Theo’s experiences are unusual — unbelievable some reviewers claim. The Goldfinch is more than a 700-plus page turner about a tragic loss: it’s also a mystery about a painting that has gone missing, an examination of friendship, and a rumination on the nature of art and appearances.