Friends and Strangers

"From the best-selling author of Maine, a gorgeous, compulsively-readable novel that tells the story of the complex relationship between two women, Elisabeth, a privileged new mother and writer attempting to find her footing after childbirth, and Sam, the idealistic, working-class college student she hires to nanny her young son"--

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the bestselling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions. Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences. A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

"From the best-selling author of Maine, a gorgeous, compulsively-readable novel that tells the story of the complex relationship between two women, Elisabeth, a privileged new mother and writer attempting to find her footing after childbirth, and Sam, the idealistic, working-class college student she hires to nanny her young son"--

A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naive troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

As three generations of Kelleher women descend on their family's Maine beach property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. By turns wickedly funny and achingly sad, this novel unveils sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family.

have you ever wanted to have a friend of your very own if your answer to this is yes then this is the book for you. there is more than 9 million people in the world right now so there is a good chance that 1 of them will want to be your friend. so to help you on your friendship journey i have made this book to teach you how to be the best friend that the world has ever known. inside of this book you will learn about: being alone making friends with strangers and animals how to make friends with people at your work or at your school popular friendship clubs that you can join how to stay friends with friends fun things to do with your friend eating with friends not eating friends online friends films about friendship caring for friends random acts of kindness losing friends and much more so pick up this book and follow me as we walk on this magical journey of friendship together and who knows with my help you might even meet your best friend who will be a part of your life for the rest of your days or until one of you dies love from your friend Chris (Simpsons artist) xox

I Want to Be Her! is part memoir and part illustrated fashion guide, written by one of fashion’s most accessible, trusted, and inspiring writers. Andrea Linett, the cofounder of Lucky magazine, shares her personal story of growing up and finding her way to fashion, and the figures who guided her along the way. Through short descriptions and memories, we meet 50 women across five eras of her life—some passing strangers, some casual friends, some close confidantes—who each made a lasting impression and helped her form her own personal style. In addition, each woman is captured in an illustration by Linett’s longtime collaborator, Anne Johnston Albert, and fashion tips accompany each entry. Praise for I Want to Be Her!: “The book is beautiful. Who would expect anything less?” —The New York Post “Andrea Linett . . . is no stranger to noticing great style: In her new book, I Want to Be Her!, she recalls in amazing detail the well-dressed ladies who have helped shape her personal fashion sense.” —Time Out New York “If you've ever fallen in love with a stranger’s cool, je ne sais quoi style or subtly copied the way your girlfriend dressed on your last girls’ night out, you’ll love Andrea Linett’s new book, I Want to Be Her! How Friends & Strangers Helped Shape My Style.” —Glamour.com “You’ll walk away with handy tips to help define your style, too.” —The Plain Dealer “From her addictive and captivating site, I Want To Be Her, Linett now presents a beautiful, printed tome of the same name.” —Refinery29

A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Pres Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout." Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

Describes the role of community in the author's life, from her experiences on the campaign trail with her husband, presidential candidate John Edwards, to the 1996 death of their teenage son and her battle with breast cancer.

Explores the marital foibles of four couples while following the creation the famous advertising campaign that turned diamonds into a symbol of the hope for everlasting love.

In its early years, William Penn's "Peaceable Kingdom" was anything but. Pennsylvania's governing institutions were faced with daunting challenges: Native Americans proved far less docile than Penn had hoped, the colony's non-English settlers were loath to accept Quaker authority, and Friends themselves were divided by grievous factional struggles. Yet out of this chaos emerged a colony hailed by contemporary and modern observers alike as the most liberal, tolerant, and harmonious in British America. In Friends and Strangers, John Smolenski argues that Pennsylvania's early history can best be understood through the lens of creolization—the process by which Old World habits, values, and practices were transformed in a New World setting. Unable simply to transplant English political and legal traditions across the Atlantic, Quaker leaders gradually forged a creole civic culture that secured Quaker authority in an increasingly diverse colony. By mythologizing the colony's early settlement and casting Friends as the ideal guardians of its uniquely free and peaceful society, they succeeded in establishing a shared civic culture in which Quaker dominance seemed natural and just. The first history of Pennsylvania's founding in more than forty years, Friends and Strangers offers a provocative new look at the transfer of English culture to North America. Setting Pennsylvania in the context of the broader Atlantic phenomenon of creolization, Smolenski's account of the Quaker colony's origins reveals the vital role this process played in creating early American society.

Celia, Bree, Sally, and April first meet as college freshmen and over a period of six years experience both happiness and disappointment as they to find fulfilling love relationships, deal with changes within their families, and pursue successful careers.

"Outrage is a matter of history in Riverview and Riverview High School (RHS), the setting for this study of a multiethnic school and community."--Preface, p. ix.

For fans of Wild Wild Country, Scientology and the Aftermath and Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, a spellbinding graphic memoir about a teenage girl who was lured into a cult and later fought to escape and reclaim her identity. Welcome to a place where you are valued. Where everyone is kind. Where you can be your truest self. It was the summer of 1980, and Marianne Boucher was ready to chase her figure skating dream. Fuelled by the desire to rise above her mundane high-school life, she sought a new adventure as a glamorous performer in L.A. And then a chance encounter on a California beach introduced her to a new group of people. People who shared her distrust of the status quo. People who seemed to value authenticity and compassion above all else. And they liked her. Not Marianne the performer, but Marianne the person. Soon, she'd abandoned school, her skating and, most dramatically, her family to live with her new friends and help them fulfill their mission of "saving the world." She believed that no sacrifice was too great to be there--and to live with real purpose. They were helping people, and they cared about her . . . didn't they? Talking to Strangers is the true story of Marianne Boucher's experiences in a cult, where she was subjected to sophisticated brainwashing techniques that took away her freedom, and took over her mind. Told in mesmerizing graphic memoir form, with vivid text and art alike, Marianne shares how she fell in with devotees of a frightening spiritual abuser, and how she eventually, painfully, pulled herself out.

From Governor General’s Award-winning author David A. Robertson comes the first book in a compelling new trilogy. A talking coyote, mysterious illnesses, and girl trouble. Coming home can be murder... When Cole Harper gets a mysterious message from an old friend begging him to come home, he has no idea what he's getting into. Compelled to return to Wounded Sky First Nation, Cole finds his community in chaos: a series of shocking murders, a mysterious illness ravaging the residents, and reemerging questions about Cole’s role in the tragedy that drove him away 10 years ago. With the aid of an unhelpful spirit, a disfigured ghost, and his two oldest friends, Cole tries to figure out his purpose, and unravel the mysteries he left behind a decade ago. Will he find the answers in time to save his community?

Discusses different situations to help make important distinctions between people who are "safe" and people to avoid.

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M

Argues for the practice of talking to strangers as a way of widening one's experience of the world, addressing the transformative possibilities as well as the political and practical considerations of engaging with strangers in public.

Borjas (economics, U. of California, Santa Barbara) provides a pinched, crabby, misanthropic and xenophobic account of immigration that will likely please political conservatives, social troglodytes, and greedy entrepreneurs. Basically, he bemoans the low quality of recent immigrant labor, and, implicitly at least, the low quality of the immigrants themselves. Where did his family come from? Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Why is there a gap in Jules’s baby album? A wry and poignant coming-of-age novel about finding the truth in lies, salvaging hope in heartbreak, and making peace with missing pieces. Eighteen-year-old Jules has always wished for a close-knit family. She never knew her father, and her ex-addict mother has always seemed more interested in artistic endeavors than in bonding with her only daughter. Jules’s life and future look as flat and unchanging as her small Illinois town. Then a simple quest to find a baby picture for the senior yearbook leads to an earth-shattering discovery: for most of the first two years of her life, Jules lived in foster care. Reeling from feelings of betrayal and with only the flimsiest of clues, Jules sets out to learn the truth about her past. What she finds is a wonderful family who loved her as their own and hoped to adopt her — including a now-adult foster brother who is overjoyed to see his sister again. But as her feelings for him spiral into a devastating, catastrophic crush — and the divide between Jules and her mother widens — Jules finds herself on the brink of losing everything.