"Missed Connections is a collection of illustrated love stories. There's "We Shared a Bear Suit." "If Not for Your Noisy Tambourine." "Hairy Bearded Swimmer." Each is told in the shorthand of a "missed connection," and then illustrated in Chinese ink and watercolor. The anonymous messages are hopeful and hopeless, funny and sad"--

An entertaining and moving memoir about coming out, looking inwards, and the search for connection, inspired by the responses to a personal ad. A Loan Stars Top 10 Pick of the Month and one of Daily Hive's 10 Essential LGBTQ2+ Books to Celebrate Pride. In 1992, Brian Francis placed a personal ad in a local newspaper. He was a twenty-one-year-old university student, still very much in the closet, and looking for love. He received twenty-five responses, but there were thirteen letters that went unanswered and spent years tucked away, forgotten, inside a cardboard box. Now, nearly thirty years later, and at a much different stage in his life, Brian has written replies to those letters. Using the letters as a springboard to reflect on all that has changed for him as a gay man over the past three decades, Brian's responses cover a range of topics, including body image, aging, desire, the price of secrecy, and the courage it takes to be unapologetically yourself. Missed Connections is an open-hearted, irreverent, often hilarious, and always bracingly honest examination of the pieces of our past we hold close -- and all that we lose along the way. It is also a profoundly affecting meditation on how Brian's generation, the queer people who emerged following the generation hit hardest by AIDS, were able to step out from the shadows and into the light. In an age when the promise of love is just a tap or swipe away, this extraordinary memoir reminds us that our yearning for connection and self-acceptance is timeless.

Your wife is having an affair with my husband. It has caused some trouble in my marriage and I thought you should know. One phone call in December 2005 begins the compelling, unpredictable story of Fake Missed Connections. A child of divorce with an already fragile sense of trust, Lauer unravels at the betrayal, begins divorce proceedings, and moves back to Brooklyn where he spends too much time alone, fixated on the idea that a murderer from 1898 might be haunting his apartment. Eventually, as he starts to peruse online dating profiles, he becomes obsessed with "missed connections" precisely because they provide what online dating doesn't: a story. He begins writing phony missed connections to post on Craigslist and, though he feels a stab of guilt when he posts them, he is hopelessly intrigued by the responses he receives. Real documents illuminate Brett's dating adventures, from love (and hate) letters and instant message conversations to Brett's online dating profile and wedding announcement. Fake Missed Connections is an unconventional yet deeply moving look at the modern search for love, the ways in which we fail to communicate, and the quest for a genuine moment of connection.

Two strangers share a romantic night together only to discover months later they're professional rivals in this grumpy meets sunshine romance novella from the acclaimed author of How To Fail at Flirting. Gia loves her job as a professor, even when it means dealing with an elusive rival academic who’s made it his mission to criticize her work. When she meets him for the first time, she’s shocked to learn they’ve met before. Months earlier, they shared a perfect New Year’s Eve together in an airport during a weather delay. After months of working together, Felix still can’t believe the person whose research he's been challenging is the same captivating woman he kissed that night. The two couldn’t be more different. Gia is bubbly, friendly, and extroverted and drives ordered, serious Felix nuts. Now the two have been assigned to embark on a five-school tour for work. Gia and Felix can’t imagine a travel partner they’d enjoy less until they feel the sparks fly over their shared armrests, security mishaps, and a shared hotel room. They'll need to decide if they can manage their professional tension, or risk missing the connection of a lifetime.

This anthology of comics inspired by real-life missed connection ads posted on Craigslist and in local papers around the country will tug at your heartstrings and make you think. Lonely hearts, romantics, and even cynics pore over missed connection ads in search of love, to gawk and giggle, or out of curiosity. These posted stranger sightings and chance encounters lay bare the truths and oddities of real-life loneliness and attractions and bring out the voyeur in the best of us. I Saw You takes this phenomenon and makes it even better. Julia Wertz has gathered the stars and soon-to-be-stars of the graphic art world, including Peter Bagge, Jesse Reklaw, Tom Hart, Sam Henderson, Laura Park, Emily Flake, Keith Knight, Janelle Hessig, Gabrielle Bell, Aaron Renier, Austin English, Corinne Mucha, Jeffrey Brown, Alec Longstreth, Minty Lewis, Joey Sayers, David Malki, Kazimir Strzepek, Ken Dahl, Shannon Wheeler, Shaenon Garrity, Rodd Perry, Abby Denson, Damien Jay, Sarah Glidden, and dozens more, to interpret these plaintive, hopeful postings in drawings that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disarmingly strange.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream, offering a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety--and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking antidepressants when he was a teenager. He was told that his problems were caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain. As an adult, trained in the social sciences, he began to investigate whether this was true-and he learned that almost everything we have been told about depression and anxiety is wrong. Across the world, Hari found social scientists who were uncovering evidence that depression and anxiety are not caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. In fact, they are largely caused by key problems with the way we live today. Hari's journey took him from a mind-blowing series of experiments in Baltimore, to an Amish community in Indiana, to an uprising in Berlin. Once he had uncovered nine real causes of depression and anxiety, they led him to scientists who are discovering seven very different solutions--ones that work. It is an epic journey that will change how we think about one of the biggest crises in our culture today. His TED talk, “Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong,” has been viewed more than eight million times and revolutionized the global debate. This book will do the same.

Journalist Alan Feuer has been collecting and composing craigslist love poetry for more than five years, amassing hundreds of sweet, raunchy, and just plain odd odes (like "10 Reasons We Won't Be Having a Second Date"). The poems compiled inside this often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking volume are reprinted verbatim from the Missed Connections section of craigslist, with only line and stanza breaks added. Knock Knock books: fun gifts for internet friends, IRL friends, or missed connections Paperback; 4 x 6 inches; 136 pages Written by Alan Feuer and published by Knock Knock