Women Friendship

Abandoned by first her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a kind of refuge with Henry and his mama, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away.

A chance encounter at a summer party on Martha’s Vineyard blossomed into an improbable but enduring friendship. Carly Simon and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis made an unlikely pair - Carly, a free and artistic spirit still reeling from her recent divorce, searching for meaning, new love, and an anchor; and Jackie, one of the most celebrated, meticulous, unknowable women in American history. Nonetheless, over the next decade their lives merged in inextricable and complex ways, and they forged a connection deeper than either could ever have foreseen.

Best friend, old friend, good friend, BFF, college roommate, neighbor, workplace confidante: women's friendships are lifelines in times of trouble and support systems for daily life. A friend can be like a sister, daughter, mother, mentor, therapist, or confessor - or she can be all of these at once. She's seen you at your worst and celebrates you at your best. Figuring out what it means to be friends is, in the end, no less than figuring out how we connect to other people.

Lucy and Ethel. Laverne and Shirley. Dorothy and Sophia and Blanche and Rose. It’s the women around us who make us who we are, and Chicken-Fried Women is a celebration of them. It’s about the women who raised us, made us, taught us to cook and clap back. It’s the ones who prayed for us, raged at us and humbled us a notch or two when we needed it.

You'd love to have a "ride or die" posse like you see on social media, but instead you have a host of really good...acquaintances. After all, trying to find a soul friend in the midst of dirty dishes, deadlines, and, oh, a crazy busy life can be overwhelming. But what if developing great friendships was actually easier than we thought? And what if finding a "soul friend" wasn't necessarily our highest goal? In The Life Council, Laura Tremaine tells us what we've been hoping was true all along: making, keeping, and even releasing friends doesn't need to be as hard as we make it.

Ven, Roz, Olive and Frankie have been friends since school. They day-dreamed of glorious futures, full of riches, romance and fabulous jobs. The world would be their oyster. Twenty-five years later, Olive cleans other people's houses to support her lazy, out-of-work husband and his ailing mother. Roz cannot show her kind, caring husband, Manus, any love because her philandering ex has left her trust in shreds. And she and Frankie have fallen out big time.

The bottom of Jess’s world is falling out. Cocooned in her dorm in the winter of 1998, she’s reeling, and wants to be left alone. But a chance encounter with the older, otherworldly, elusive Clara has Jess awestruck. Clara, newly returned from a two-year trek drifting around the world, is taking a stab at normalcy for once, and the place she starts is university, where she struggles to fit in. Upon meeting Jess, though, Clara feels an instant connection, and everything seems brighter.

At forty-five, Chef Nina has all but given up on her dream of having a kitchen of her very own. Once hailed as the fresh, new face on the restaurant scene, she saw her hopes for the future fall like an overbaked soufflé after the man she loved betrayed her and destroyed her reputation. Ten years later, Nina gets one more chance to make her dreams come true. While her friends convert a run-down beach house, Nina tests out new dishes for the Café at Sugar Sand Inn. But when rumors of Nina’s past threaten the Café, will diners patronize the restaurant she’s always wanted?

Lina y Elena son ahora adultas y han tomado caminos distintos: Elena dejó Nápoles para casarse y convertirse en una escritora de éxito en Florencia. Solo un amor de juventud que vuelve a florecer la devolverá a Nápoles, donde la espera Lina, que ahora es madre y además ha triunfado muy a su manera en el negocio local.

Serena, Michelle, Kenya, and Lynette have been best friends since they were small children. And as sister friends forever, they have always been there for one another, through good times and bad, no matter what. This year is a crucial turning point for each woman. Serena, still single, is questioning why love hasn’t found her yet. Michelle is engaged and ready to walk down the aisle—until an old flame strolls back into her life. Kenya is happily married, but at the same time, her husband’s ex-wife won’t allow them or their family to live in peace.

Lauren has the perfect life...if she ignores the fact it’s a fragile house of cards, and that her daughter Mack has just had a teenage personality transplant. Jenna is desperate to start a family with her husband, but it’s... Just. Not. Happening. Her heart is breaking, but she’s determined to keep her trademark smile on her face. Nancy knows she hasn’t been the best mother, but how can she ever tell Lauren and Jenna the reason why? Lauren, Mack, Jenna, and Nancy are thrown together for a summer on Martha’s Vineyard.

In this practical and deeply touching guide - inspired by her book Reach Out, Gather In - popular author Karen Ehman gives you 101 actionable ideas you can implement today to truly make a difference in the lives of other people. Make Their Day is filled with creative ideas to connect with your family and friends on a deeper level throughout the year. This book will help you develop habits of kindness, reconnect with friends and family, and make encouraging people a priority.

It was always Samantha's dream to run her beautiful rescue centre, Hedgehog Hollow, full-time. But just as her wish comes true, she becomes a victim of her own kindness when she finds herself with a house full of guests - all with their own problems and secrets - looking to her for support. When her self-absorbed cousin, Chloe, unexpectedly turns up at the farm - swiftly handing over her baby to Samantha to care for - trouble is definitely brewing. Especially as Chloe won’t tell anyone why she’s left her husband, James.

Did you know that God’s light can shine through every facet of your identity? Radiant is an invitation for teen girls and young women to enjoy a candid conversation on identity with best-selling author Priscilla Shirer. You’ll hear reflections on life lessons she’s gathered from her teen years until now. She’ll show you how the light of God’s Word shaped her identity, and she’ll teach you how it can change and shape your life as well.

Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years; now, at 30, they're at a crossroads. Bev is a Midwestern striver still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe. Amy is an East Coast princess whose luck and charm have too long allowed her to cruise through life. Bev is stuck in circumstances that would have barely passed for bohemian in her mid-20s. Amy is still riding the tailwinds of her early success, but her habit of burning bridges is finally catching up to her. And now Bev is pregnant.

Miranda Popkey's first novel is about desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, guilt - written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism. The novel is composed almost exclusively of conversations between women - the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves, about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage - and careens through 20 years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life.

When Lou Winterpicks up a dog-eared magazine in the dentist's waiting room and spots an article about clearing clutter, she little realises how it will change her life. What begins as an earnest spring clean soon spirals out of control. Lou's loved ones grow disgruntled. Why is clearing out cupboards suddenly more important than making his breakfast, her husband, Phil, wonders? The truth is, the more rubbish Lou lets go of, the more light and air can get to those painful, closed-up places at the centre of her heart.

Margo Everson sees the call out for the cookbook club and knows she’s found her people. Recently dumped by her self-absorbed husband, who frankly isn’t much of a loss, she has little to show for her marriage but his "parting gift"—a dilapidated old farm house—and a collection of well-loved cookbooks. Aja Alexander just hopes her newfound friends won’t notice that that every time she looks at food, she gets queasy. It’s hard hiding a pregnancy, especially one she can’t bring herself to share with her wealthy boyfriend and his snooty mother.

Assigned to the same suite during their freshman year at Quincy-Hawthorn College, Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret quickly become inseparable. The leafy green campus they move through together, the idyllic window seat they share in their suite, and the passion and ferocity that school and independence awakens in them ignites an all-encompassing love with one another. But they soon find their bonds must weather threats that originate from beyond the dark forests of their childhoods, and come at them from institutions, from one another, and ultimately, from within themselves.

From the author of the “bighearted...inspiring” (Vogue) memoir Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: The story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there - thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship. After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home - it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone. The 38-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House.