Friendship is one of life’s greatest joys, and that there can be so many kinds of friendships over the course of your life? It’s nearly magic. Friendships can come from your college dorm, from work, from the bagel shop down the street from your apartment. And they all deserve to be celebrated. July 30th is International Friendship Day, and we invite you to share audiobooks about friends of all kinds with your favorite pals as a way of saying “hi, I like you a bunch!”
In these stories you’ll find unlikely (for many reasons) friendships, ragtag groups of weirdos, best-friend-only level schemes, childhood friends navigating growing up, and the specific heartwarming joy of human connection and platonic love.
It was early evening and a new acquaintance had come to retrieve his daughter from a play date. Instead of the standard minivan, he arrived by sailboat. How could you resist befriending a man such as that? Alive with the intoxicating magic of summer in New England, Charles McGrath’s The Summer Friend recalls amateur lobstering, 9-hole golf, family costume charades, bridge-jumping, and a friendship forged between two men from different backgrounds who came together late in life.
Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences, loves, and losses. Now, some thirty years later, the three women are reunited for the first time in Lagos for Funmi’s daughter Destiny’s wedding. As the big day approaches, the complexities of the mothers’ friendship—and the private wisdom each has earned—come to light. Dele Weds Destiny is a sensational debut from a dazzling new voice in contemporary fiction.
Rhett Gallagher’s relationship has collapsed and her gran’s death draws her back to the family farm. The only silver lining is that Rhett’s book, written under a pseudonym, has become a wild success. When her big publicity moment comes, Rhett persuades her best friend, Jasmine, to step into the limelight in her stead. But their prank turns into something more in In Her Boots, a story that proves that your past can sometimes set you free.
After Bran’s mother joins a Buddhist colony, Bran is raised by her “common-law stepfather” on Bourdon Farms. She spends her days tending plants and slogging through high school. Bran searches for meaning in her own surroundings—attending disastrous dance recitals, house-sitting for strangers, and writing scripts for student films. Avalon is a poignant portrait of a young woman who is determined to find her place in the world.
Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren’t exactly what they’d imagined. Joy has fallen for their new roommate Theo, who has a girlfriend. Annie has a commitment-phobic boyfriend and work turmoil. Perceptive, mordantly funny, and full of heart, How to Fall Out of Love Madly examines women’s many relationships—with one another, their mothers, their work, men, and themselves—to reveal their underlying power and complexity.
Newly single and with nowhere to live, Danny Scudd moves in with his best friend, Jacob, a flamboyant nonbinary artist whom he’s known since childhood, and their eccentric group of friends. Upon realizing just how little he knows about himself and his sexuality, Danny relies on his inscrutable new therapist and housemates to help him face the demons he’s spent his entire life trying to repress. First Time for Everything is a colorful voyage of discovery through modern queer life, dating, and lots of therapy.
When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. As the two food-loving women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives. Love & Saffron is a reminder that food and friendship are the antidote to most any heartache, and that human connection will always be worth creating.