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 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.

A New York Times “Book to Watch For”
A Washington Post “Book to Read this Summer”
A Vogue “Book to Read this June”
A People magazine “Best Book to Read this Summer”
A Good Morning America “Book You'll Want to Read This Summer”
A Good Housekeeping “Best Beach Read”
A Bustle “Most Anticipated Book of 2020”
A SheReads “Most Anticipated Book of 2020”
A Real Simple “Top Pick for Summer”

PRAISE FOR friends and strangers

“Friends and Strangers is about whether the unfairness of privilege can ever be sufficiently offset by good deeds. And what of bad deeds: Are they forgiven if they result from good intentions?... . Sullivan massages her themes in scenes as barbed as they are funny, by way of characters as infuriating as they are heartbreaking.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Sullivan’s intimate, incisive latest explores the evolving friendship between a new mother and her babysitter... Readers will be captivated by Sullivan’s authentic portrait of modern motherhood.”
——Publishers Weekly