Stories

What do Bar Mitzvahs and food carts have in common? Nothing… unless you’re talking about a precocious young teen with a Jewish boyfriend and a best friend who's half black Cajun and half Asian, and who’s a gifted teenage chef. With a double Bar Mitzvah on the Fourth of July weekend, why not make it a pool party? Oy Vey!

Elijah sometimes feels as though he doesn't belong. He's still in the closet, and he is the only Jewish boy in the whole dorm. During the end of the school year, Elijah's friends make him feel included when they gift him a Jewish ornament, a menorah, to hang from the Christmas tree in the common room. When it goes missing overnight, the consequences threaten to spoil the holiday spirit for everyone. As Elijah pieces together what happened, he discovers more than one truth.

A man who is desperate for money robs a bank, with unexpected consequences.

Larry was the son of a famous opera singer and a well-known conductor, but his passion in life was to be a medical scientist. However, when the pandemic waylaid his plans to go to the Bronx High School of Science, instead he applied to LaGuardia, New York's premier public high school of the arts. Just as an intermezzo is a short musical bridge, Intermezzo brings together characters from other stories in the New York Stories series while filling in some gaps. Told from the point of view of Larry's girlfriend, Robin, he learns that sometimes the shortest path to one's goals isn't the straightest one.

A very short but true story of four boys in a freak storm

Yuto Tanaka has been training harder than ever for the Ogawa High School swimming club's first meet of the year. While he is not as strong or fast as some of the older boys on the team, he has been making progress. Progress due in no small part to the mentorship of his senpai, Gen Uotate. With only a few days until the meet, Uotate-senpai pulls Yuto aside for one last bit of preparation, intended to strengthen both Yuto's standing on the team and their bond with each other.

Ryan meets the man of his dreams. Literally.

Boy meets boy, leaves boy, meets another boy. All the usual things happen to someone with a thankfully less-than-usual life.

Jeremy has convinced himself that he is madly in love with one of the most incredible boys in his entire high school. Beautiful, popular...and totally not interested in Jeremy. While he longs for Steven, day and night, he just can't seem to figure out what he's doing wrong. And yet, his heart can't seem to let him go and move on. What is it that Steven seems to dislike so much about him? And should he keep trying to build a bridge between them, or is poor Jeremy just wasting his time?

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Asher White was everything Clarke hated. He was half-black and half-Asian, and out and proud. But when Asher actually managed to beat Clarke in wrestling, he just snapped and punched Asher out. Clarke knew this was it. He'd worked so hard to get into New York's elite Stuyvesant High School and now it would be for naught. Grasping at straws, he tells the vice-principle the one secret not even he knows he has. With the help of a new friend, he is forced to confront years of abuse he has suffered at home. After all, bullying starts in the home, and it must end in the home.