College Life Fiction

The vibrant stories in I’ll Give You a Reason explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband’s death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. An unhappy wife compares her mother’s love spells and rituals to her own efforts to repair her strained marriage. A self-conscious college student discovers a porn star who shares her name and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger’s freedom and comfort with her own body.

Judy Moody is in a mood. Not a good mood. And definitely NOT a math mood. The substitute teacher in Class 3T thinks Judy's math skills need improving. So Judy has to start meeting with a math tutor. Does this mean flash cards? Does this mean baby games? Does this mean school on weekends? But when Judy meets her tutor - a sick-awesome college student with an uber-funky sense of style - and gets a glimpse of college life, Judy's bad math-i-tude turns into a radical glad-i-tude.

Campus Chronicles will inspire you, amuse you, and support you through your college years. Whether you are a high-school student just leaving for college, or a college senior who has seen it all, these stories will illuminate the college experience for you.

Chester Pierce broke racial barriers by joining his college football team during segregation in the United States. Despite breaking the law, his team played on.

Sky Fielder is a typical college student, except that she is a product of the foster-care system, lives in a halfway house, and meets with her caseworker on a weekly basis. While failing to balance her grades and erratic social life, she receives a call from a hospital, asking her to make medical decisions for her brother Ben—who died more than a decade before. The call must be a scam, and besides, Sky has a new life now. None of her classmates know about her desperate and feral childhood in West Texas.

Set in Arco, Idaho, in 1970, Val Brelinski’s powerfully affecting first novel tells the story of three sisters: Young Frances, gregarious and strong-willed Jory, and moral-minded Grace. Their father, Oren, is a respected member of the community and science professor at the local college. Yet their mother’s depression and Grace’s religious fervor threaten the seemingly perfect family, whose world is upended when Grace returns from a missionary trip to Mexico and discovers she’s pregnant with - she believes - the child of God.

Eloise "Lou" Hansen is graduating from Columbia University summa cum laude, and she's ready to conquer the world. Just a few minor problems: She has no job, no prospects, and she's moving back into her childhood bedroom. Lou is grimly determined to stick to a rigorous schedule to get a job and get out of her parents' house. Shelly "Mama Shell" Hansen, on the other hand, is ecstatic, and just as determined to keep her at home. Who else will help her hide her latest binge-shopping purchases from her husband, go to SoulCycle with her, and hold her hand during Botox shots?

Living under the shadow of two gifted parents, Astrid Nordling feels trapped everywhere but at the piano, finding solace in Schubert and Debussy. Her piano teacher is convinced that she is a prodigy; her mother is not so sure. Set in 1960s Chicago, this excerpt from Lisa Heiserman Perkins' upcoming novel shows that there can be such a thing as too much talent in a single family. As Astrid competes with her dramatic, high-strung mother for the spotlight, their tug-of-war threatens to pull the family apart.

Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes 17-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist - a nearly impossible dream for a girl. After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind....

Ryden Malby had a plan. Step One: do well in high school, thereby achieving Step Two: get a kick-butt college scholarship. Step Three—limit her beer pong in order to keep said scholarship—wasn't always easy. Now that she's finally graduated, it's time for Step Four: moving to LA to land her dream job at the city's best publishing house. So far, Ryden's three-for-three, but she's about to stumble on Step Four When Jessica Bard, Ryden's college nemesis—the prettiest, smartest, most ambitious girl at school—steals her perfect job, Ryden's forced to move back to her childhood home in the Valley.

In a Massachusetts college town stands a dilapidated colonial: Delta Zeta Chi. Here, we meet Newton, the beloved chapter president; Oprah, the sensitive reader; Petey, the treasurer, loyal to a fault; Claire, the couch-surfing dropout who hopes to sell them drugs; and a girl known, for unexpected reasons, as God. Though the living room reeks of sweat and spilled beer, the brothers know that to be inside is everything.

In this poignant, funny, and romantic novel, four nights of epic partying will see two teens through their highest highs and lowest lows over the course of one unforgettable year.

Karen Anders, high school English teacher and adoptive mother of Tiffany, comes to terms with being a single parent and a clumsy drunk in Houston, TX, as she forges an unlikely friendship with Leona Supak, a WWII, Hungarian refugee who inspires her to change her views on motherhood, drinking, and men.