Fed up, frustrated and fast approaching forty, Charlie Simpson hasn’t had many high points in her life just lately. The only peak on the horizon is her ambition to climb Everest, if she could only get organised and save up the cash. Unfortunately, though, she has more pressing things to deal with; her eldest son moving out, her father moving in, and her best friend moving two hundred miles away. She finds solace, however, via her newly acquired modem, when she stumbles upon a stranger who’s a like-minded soul. Like-minded, perhaps, but no fantasy dream date. Though virtual, he’s of the real-life variety – he may be a hero, but he has a wife. Charlie hasn’t got a husband, but she certainly has principles, and they’re about to be hauled up a mountain themselves. And, of course, her mum’s always said she shouldn’t talk to strangers. The question is, is now the time to start breaking the rules? 'A fantastic book that gets you hooked from the first page' New Woman 'It's wonderfully funny and rather inspiring...I enjoyed it hugely and I confess I read it all in one go, wolfing it down like a delicious box of chocolates' Judy Astley ‘A charming and optimistic novel about modern love’ – Hello Magazine ‘A laugh out loud read’ – Real magazine 'I absolutely loved it - hooray for Julia! this is funny, original, well-written and unguessable - I had no idea how it would end. It also has the very best closing paragraph I've read in years. Completely wonderful, dazzlingly entertaining, unputdownaable' Jill Mansell

The Flatshare meets a modern You've Got Mail Do you believe in love at first type? When Ada set up her own PR firm from a coffee shop, she didn't expect to meet journalist Fraser. Also working there daily, he soon becomes a friend. Reporting on interesting things to do around Edinburgh, Fraser ropes Ada into accompanying him on his assignments. As they work side-by-side Ada can't help but notice how attractive Fraser is, and how well they get along. But, Ada has been chatting to a guy she met on an Agatha Christie fan fiction site, and she can't stop wondering about him. His interests are the same as hers, and the anonymity helps them both be more honest and open. As Ada's messages with the mystery man become deeper, she thinks she's falling for him. Ada is torn between Fraser and Myster-E - but can you have real feelings for someone when you're virtual strangers?

Inspiring and heartwarming real-life stories.

‘The City on Screen: Modern Strangers of Cinematic Istanbul’ attempts to analyze how Istanbul is captured through the projector; in other words, the ontological relationship between city and film and how it is elaborated within the context of Istanbul and the sense of strangerhood. This book shifts the axis of Istanbul, typically known as a touristic city, to its underlying details through the strangers in the modern city. Five different films set in this region are analyzed in the text that help to reveal and clarify the socio-urban life of modern Istanbul. The characters and stories in these films tell how Istanbul has socially and architecturally become a city of strangers. The films analyzed include ‘A Touch of Spice’ (2004), ‘Men on the Bridge’ (2009), ‘A Run for Money’ (1999), ‘Distant’ (2002), and ‘10 to 11’ (2009). The theoretical framework of this book is based on the works of Georg Simmel, Zygmunt Bauman and Richard Sennett. These three thinkers have all attempted to look for answers to the sociological question of strangerhood in urban living. This book accomplishes this connection by discussing the similarities and differences between each of their theories regarding the city, cinema and strangerhood.

"None of us had the faintest idea where we were going [but] during 1938–39 . . . the town [Christchurch] was made strangely interesting for anyone like myself, [with the] scattered arrival of ‘the refugees'. All at once there were people among us who were actually from Vienna, or Chemnitz, or Berlin . . . who knew the work of Schoenberg and Gropius." —Anthony Alpers, 1985 From the 1930s through the 1950s, a substantial number of forced migrants – refugees from Nazism, displaced people after World War II and escapees from Communist countries – arrived in New Zealand from Europe. Among them were an extraordinary group of artists and writers, photographers and architects whose European modernism radically reshaped the arts in this country. In words and pictures, Strangers Arrive tells their story. Ranging across the arts from photographer Irene Koppel to art dealer and printmaker Kees Hos, architect Imric Porsolt to writer Antigone Kefala, Leonard Bell takes us inside New Zealand's bookstores and coffeehouses, studios and galleries to introduce us to a compelling body of artistic work. He asks key questions. How were migrants received by New Zealanders? How did displacement and settlement in New Zealand transform their work? How did the arrival of European modernists intersect with the burgeoning nationalist movement in the arts in New Zealand? Strangers Arrive introduces us to a talented group of ‘aliens' who were critical catalysts for change in New Zealand culture.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • An insightful and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions. "Once again, Sullivan has shown herself to be one of the wisest and least pretentious chroniclers of modern life."—The Washington Post 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.

This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how these, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity. This work will be of essential interest to scholars and students in the fields of sociology, geography, cultural studies and media studies.