Books like Friends and Strangers
Elisabeth, a journalist and new mother who has just moved from Brooklyn to a small Hudson Valley town, hires Sam, a college senior, to babysit, and the two become friends across a divide neither of them sees clearly.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of Friends and Strangers
Come and Get It
At the University of Arkansas in 2017, Millie Cousins, a senior and resident assistant saving to buy a house, accepts an offer from Agatha Paul, a visiting professor writing about young people and money, and lets her interview the girls in her dorm.
Bridge of Sighs
Lou Lynch, sixty, who has spent his whole life in the upstate New York town of Thomaston running his family's corner stores, writes his life story as he and his wife plan a trip to Venice to see his boyhood friend Bobby Marconi, now a famous painter.
The House of Eve
In 1950s Philadelphia, Ruby Pearsall, fifteen, is set to be the first in her family to go to college, while in Washington, Eleanor Quarles, a Howard University student, marries into an old, wealthy Black family who never let her forget where she came from.
Our Country Friends
A group of friends quarantine together at a Hudson Valley dacha during the pandemic, and the isolation reveals every fault line in their relationships.
All Adults Here
Astrid Strick, a widow in a small Hudson Valley town, sees an acquaintance killed by a school bus, and decides it is time to tell her grown children something she has kept from them.
The Celebrants
Five friends from college once promised to hold a funeral for one another while they were still alive to hear the eulogies, and nearly thirty years on, Jordan calls them to a house in Big Sur to use his.
Tell Me Everything
In Crosby, Maine, the lawyer Bob Burgess takes on the case of a lonely man suspected of killing his mother, while his friend, the writer Lucy Barton, visits the elderly Olive Kitteridge, who has stories she wants to tell.
The Casual Vacancy
When parish councillor Barry Fairbrother dies suddenly in his forties, his empty seat sets off a war in the pretty English town of Pagford, where rich and poor, parents and teenagers, are each hiding something.
Behold the Dreamers
In 2007 Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem with his wife and son, lands a job as chauffeur to Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers.
Empire Falls
A struggling restaurant manager in a declining Maine mill town holds together his family, his friendships, and his sanity by a thread.
Such a Fun Age
A twenty-five-year-old Black babysitter is publicly accused of kidnapping the white toddler in her care, and everyone's performative allyship collapses.
Swing Time
Two mixed-race girls from a London housing estate who meet at a dance class take different paths, one a talented dancer, the other an assistant to a global pop star, in a novel about race, talent and envy.