Friends and Strangers

From the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick) comes an insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life. Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after twenty years in New York City. A job opportunity for her husband, and the chance to live closer to his financially struggling parents, convinced Elisabeth to move. But alone in the new house with their 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 chains with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, who is hired by Elisabeth 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 her student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, Sam and Elisabeth grow close. Sam becomes Elisabeth's confidante, a repository for all the secrets Elisabeth is too ashamed to tell even her own husband. Elisabeth, in turn, offers guidance, allaying Sam's fears. 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 leads to a betrayal that has devastating consequences. A masterful exploration of modern motherhood, power dynamics within friendships, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers brilliantly reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

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 best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick). 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.

THE PERFECT BOOK GROUP SUMMER READ FROM BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE ENGAGEMENTS AND MAINE 'I LOVED IT' Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion 'HER BEST YET' Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Daisy Jones & The Six 'A SMART AND DEEPLY COMPELLING EXPLORATION OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP' Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers 'CAPTIVATING, WISE AND LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY' Ann Napolitano, author of Dear Edward 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, 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.

Ranging from Texas to California on a young writer's journey in a car he calls El Chevy, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is one of Larry McMurtry's most vital and entertaining novels. Danny Deck is on the verge of success as an author when he flees Houston and hurtles unexpectedly into the hearts of three women: a girlfriend who makes him happy but who won't stay, a neighbor as generous as she is lusty, and his pal Emma Horton. It's a wild ride toward literary fame and an uncharted country...beyond everyone he deeply loves. All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a wonderful display of Larry McMurtry's unique gift: his ability to re-create the subtle textures of feelings, the claims of passing time and familiar place, and the rich interlocking swirl of people's lives.

Now a documentary narrated by Common, produced by Grant Hill, Dwyane Wade, and 9th Wonder, from filmmaker Mary Mazzio The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives. Growing up on Chicago’s Westside in the 90’s, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs, the hallways of his apartment complex are haunted by drug addicts he calls “zombies” with strung out arms, clutching at him as he passes by. His mother is a recovering addict, and his three siblings all sleep in a one room apartment, a small infantry against the war zone on the street below. Arshay keeps to himself, preferring to write poetry about the girl he has a crush on, and spends his school days in the home-ec kitchen dreaming of becoming a chef. And then one day as he’s walking out of school he notices a boat in the school lunchroom, and a poster that reads “Join the Crew Team”. Having no idea what the sport of crew is, Arshay decides to take a chance. This decision to join is one that will forever change his life, and those of his fellow teammates. As Arshay and his teammates begin to come together to learn how to row--many never having been in water before--the sport takes them from the mean streets of Chicago, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. But Arshay and his teammates face adversity at every turn, from racism, gang violence, and a sport that has never seen anyone like them before. A Most Beautiful Thing is the inspiring true story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family, and forever change a sport and their lives for the better.

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.

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.

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.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Commencement and Maine comes a gorgeous, sprawling novel about marriage—about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it all with a wedding. Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years—forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love—the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it’s over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife’s family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding—beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings—and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: “A Diamond Is Forever.” And that line changes everything. A rich, layered, exhilarating novel spanning nearly a hundred years, The Engagements captures four wholly unique marriages, while tracing the story of diamonds in America, and the way—for better or for worse—these glittering stones have come to symbolize our deepest hopes for everlasting love. This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

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

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

One of Vogue's Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020, one of the Wall Street Journal's Nine Best Books to Read This Spring, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of Vulture's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of Refinery29's 25 Books You'll Want to Read This Summer, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020 A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths. Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

A brilliantly funny novel about ambition and marriage from the best selling author of Girls in White Dresses, The Hopefuls tells the story of a young wife who follows her husband and his political dreams to D.C., a city of idealism, gossip, and complicated friendships among young Washington's aspiring elite. When Beth arrives in Washington, D.C., she hates everything about it: the confusing traffic circles, the ubiquitous Ann Taylor suits, the humidity that descends each summer. At dinner parties, guests compare their security clearance levels. They leave their BlackBerrys on the table. They speak in acronyms. And once they realize Beth doesn't work in politics, they smile blandly and turn away. Soon Beth and her husband, Matt, meet a charismatic White House staffer named Jimmy and his wife, Ashleigh, and the four become inseparable, coordinating brunch, birthdays, and long weekends away. But as Jimmy's star rises higher and higher, their friendship--and Beth's relationship with Matt--is threatened by jealousy, competition and rumors. A glorious send-up of young D.C. and a blazingly honest portrait of a marriage, this is the finest work yet by one of our most beloved writers. From the Hardcover edition.

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

In 1980, Marianne Boucher felt like a misfit. To the world, she was a high school student with a bright future as a powerhouse figure skater. But she always felt like she was performing - both on the ice and off. And then she found her people. Talking to Strangers is the true story of Marianne Boucher's experiences in a cult that brainwashed her and took over her life. Told in stunning 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.

Photographic portraits created by artist Oliver Wasow

Friends and Other Strangers argues for expanding the field of religious ethics to address the normative dimensions of culture, interpersonal desires, friendships and family, and institutional and political relationships. Richard B. Miller urges religious ethicists to turn to cultural studies to broaden the range of the issues they address and to examine matters of cultural practice and cultural difference in critical and self-reflexive ways. Friends and Other Strangers critically discusses the ethics of ethnography; ethnocentrism, relativism, and moral criticism; empathy and the ethics of self-other attunement; indignation, empathy, and solidarity; the meaning of moral responsibility in relation to children and friends; civic virtue, war, and alterity; the normative and psychological dimensions of memory; and religion and democratic public life. Miller challenges distinctions between psyche and culture, self and other, and uses the concepts of intimacy and alterity as dialectical touchstones for examining the normative dimensions of self-other relationships. A wholly contemporary, global, and interdisciplinary work, Friends and Other Strangers illuminates aspects of moral life ethicists have otherwise overlooked.

"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.

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?