Books about Love and Friendship
Valentine’s Day is the one time of the year to show your love and compassion for people in your life you most care about. Check out this list that celebrates both romantic and platonic relationships!
Adults
Love in the Time of Cholera
By Gabriel García Márquez
Florentino Ariza engages in hundreds of liasons over the course of fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days, while waiting to finally possess Fermina Daza, a woman who once promised Florentino her love, but then jilted him in favor of another.
Friendship: An Exposé
By Joseph Epstein
Just as his best-selling Snobbery argued that contemporary American snobbery isn’t what it used to be, Friendship: An Expose begins with Joseph Epstein’s feeling that friendship, too, is somehow different today. From the idealization of “family time” to the acceptance of gender equality, from technological leaps like e-mail and instant messaging to the (very recent) assumption that your husband or wife will be your best friend, Epstein charts the unexpected and surprising forces that have put pressure on and reshaped friendship.
First Love
By James Patterson
Runaways Axi, sixteen, and Robinson, seventeen, who met on a cancer ward, leave small-town Oregon on a cross-country trip to experience the best of life before it is too late.
Peony in Love
By Lisa See
In post-Ming dynasty China, Peony, a young girl betrothed to someone she has never met, observes a handsome man while hidden from view at a performance of the opera “The Peony Pavilion”–a work that has compelled young Chinese women to starve themselves to death–and, dead at sixteen, begins a transformative journey as a “hungry ghost.”
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
By Alice Munro
A superb new collection from one of our best and best-loved writers. Nine stories draw us immediately into that special place known as Alice Munro territory-a place where an unexpected twist of events or a suddenly recaptured memory can illumine the arc of an entire life.
Finding Love Again: 6 Simple Steps to A New and Happy Relationship
By Terri Orbuch
Presents a study of marriage, divorce, and repartnering that provides essential strategies, tools, and information for healing after divorce and preparing for a healthy and fulfilling new relationship.
Friendships Don’t Just Happen! The Guide to Creating A Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends
By Shasta Nelson
Every woman is searching for a happier, healthier, more fulfilling life. Many realize the significant role that an intimate, tightly knit circle of friends plays in creating a more fulfilling life, but with hectic schedules, frequent moves, and life changes, it’s more important than ever for women to establish natural, meaningful friendships that will contribute to their overall wellbeing. This essential go-to guide reveals how women can enhance their lives by creating valuable friendships in today’s busy, mobile world.
Classic Engish Love Poems
This lovely anthology contains 87 classic poems of love from 48 poets that have continued to inspire over the years. The charmingly illustrated collection includes the timeless love lyrics of Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, John Donne, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Montagu, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Bront#65533;, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy and Gerard Manley Hopkins among others.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
By Gail Caldwell
In this gorgeous, moving memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caldwell reflects on her own coming-of-age in midlife, as she learns to open herself to the power and healing of sharing her life with a best friend.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
By Garth Stein
Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher’s soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe’s maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
Teens/Young Adults
Street Love
By Walter Dean Myers
The swift flow of these short poems carries readers along in thoughts, conversations, and scenes as Damien and Junice’s romance begins. He is a high achiever who has been accepted to Brown University and is expected to go far. Junice has just lost her mother to prison and is trying to keep her younger sister and her grandmother together as a family. Damien and Junice question who they are and who they will become. Hip-hop-style phrases feel like Shakespeare telling of these African-American teens in Harlem, struggling to keep it together. Intellect meets Street as true love conquers all. This is a quick and satisfying read, simple and timeless.
Friendship: Annie’s Fair-weather Friend
By Shelagh Canning
When she learns that the most popular girl at school was just pretending to be her friend, Annie is upset until Plato, the buffalo, tells the story of a young Indian named Waukewa who is a true friend to an injured eagle.
A Teen’s Guide to the 5 Love Languages: How to Understand Yourself and Improve All your Relationships
By Gary Chapman
Introducing A Teen’s Guide to the 5 Love Languages, the first-ever edition written just to teens, for teens, and with a teen’s world in mind. It guides emerging adults in discovering and understanding their own love languages as well as how to best express love to others. What motivates and inspires me? What does it mean to be a caring friend? What communicates love to my family? What is the best way to get along with the opposite sex?
Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love
A collection of short stories combining dark seduction and modern romance presents a variety of tales featuring the romantic lives of humans and werewolves, ghosts, fallen angels, zombies, and shape-shifters.
Not Exactly A Love Story
By Audrey Couloumbis
After his parents divorce, high school junior Vinnie Gold moves to Long Island with his mother and new stepfather and must negotiate a secret crush and a rather complicated connection with the popular girl next door.
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker: The Unlikely Friendship of Elizabeth Keckley & Mary Todd Lincoln
By Linda Jones
Few events can stir up a scandal more than an autobiography of a First Lady’s confidante. In 1868, a controversial tell-all called Behind the Scenes introduced readers to Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley. Mrs. Keckley was a former slave who had been Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and friend during the White House years, and in the aftermath of President Lincoln’s assassination. The book exposed Mary’s marriage and her erratic behavior, along with confidential opinions of many in high society. The airing of the Lincoln’s “dirty laundry” meant humiliation for Mary and her family, and Elizabeth’s reputation was destroyed. This outcome would have been unimaginable in 1867, when Mary declared in a letter, “I consider you my best living friend.” How could such a bond have developed between a woman born into slavery and the First Lady of the United States? Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker answers this question by chronicling the extraordinary lives of these women.
Girls in Love
By Hailey Abbot
Spending another summer in the picturesque town of Pebble Beach, Maine, teenaged cousins Jessica, Lara, and Greer face new dating challenges.
She Wore Red Trainers: A Muslim Love Story
By Na’íma bint Robert
When Ali first meets Amirah, he notices everything about her – her hijab, her long eyelashes and her red trainers – in the time it takes to have one look, before lowering his gaze. And, although Ali is still coming to terms with the loss of his mother and exploring his identity as a Muslim, and although Amirah has sworn never to get married, they can’t stop thinking about each other. Can Ali and Amirah ever have a halal ‘happily ever after’?
Breaking up Is Hard to Do: Stories About Falling Out of Love by Four Incredible Authors
A collection of four stories by women authors that explore the joys and sorrows of falling in and out of love.
Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
By John Grogan
The story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life. Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a bigger-than-life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans.
Children
Love, Lola
By Diane De Groat
Lola gets ready for Valentine’s Day with her opossum family.
Where Are You Going? To See My Friend! [a Story of Friendship in Two Languages]
By Eric Carle
This lively and rhythmic, bilingual picture book is told in dialogue, with rebuslike symbols used to identify speakers. It details an energetic romp with a dog, cat, rooster, goat, rabbit, and a child, all of whom become friends. Carle’s familiar collage technique is employed in the book’s first half, while Iwamura’s gentle watercolor illustrations, combined with the Japanese text, make up the second half. The two texts are divided by a gatefold that includes the music and lyrics to the song “Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!” in English and Japanese. An irresistible, spirited ode to friendship.
Guess How Much I Love You
By Sam McBratney
During a bedtime game, every time Little Nutbrown Hare demonstrates how much he loves his father, Big Nutbrown Hare gently shows him that the love is returned even more.
The Hero Two Doors Down: Based on the True Story of Friendship Between A Boy and A Baseball Legend
By Sharon Robinson
Eight-year-old Steve Satlow is thrilled when Jackie Robinson moves into his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in 1948, although many of his neighbors are not, and when Steve actually meets his hero he is even more excited–and worried that a misunderstanding over a Christmas tree could damage his new friendship.
I Love My Papi!
By Alison Inches
Dora and her Papi play baseball, go to the beach, read books, and do lots of other fun things together.
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind An American Friendship
By Russell Freedman
A clear-sighted, carefully researched account of two surprisingly parallel lives and how they intersected at a critical moment in U.S. history.
A Friend Called Anne: One Girl’s Story of War, Peace, and A Unique Friendship With Anne Frank
By Carol Ann Lee
The story of Jacqueline van Maarsen (“Jopie”), who was Anne Frank’s best friend before Anne went into hiding. She remembers her friendship with Anne, her own experiences of the Holocaust, and accepting the fame of Anne’s diary.
How the Guinea Fowl Got Her Spots: A Swahili Tale of Friendship
By Barbara Knutson
A folk explanation for the guinea fowl’s protective coloration that enables it to hide from its natural predator, the lion.
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