Summer is a great time to take your favorite companions on a road trip.  Book lovers take some companions to the beach. The best companions don't need a beach at all. Here's to summer and good friends.


Compiled by:
Christine F.
Allie and Bea : a novel

Catherine Ryan Hyde
Hyde

Bea has barely been scraping by since her husband died. After falling for a telephone scam, she loses everything and is forced to abandon her trailer. With only two-thirds of a tank in her old van, she heads toward the Pacific Ocean with her caton a mission to reclaim whats rightfully hers, even if it means making others pay for what she lost.When fifteen-year-old Allies parents are jailed for tax fraud, she's sent to a group home. But when her life is threatened by another resident, she knows she has to get out. She escapes only to find she has nowhere to go until fate throws Allie in Bea's path. Reluctant to trust each other, much less become friends, the two warily make their way up the Pacific Coast. Yet as their hearts open to friendship and love from the strangers they meet on their journey, they find the courage to forge their own unique family and begin to see an imperfect world with new eyes.
 


City of friends

Joanna Trollope
Trollop

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between. But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey's redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits.
    
 


Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine : a novel

Gail Honeyman
Honeyma

No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an older gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond's big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes, The only way to survive is to open your heart"—Provided by publisher.


I for isobel

Amy Witting
Witting

"Isobel's imaginary friends include the Virgin Mary and Sherlock Holmes, Lord Byron, W.H. Auden, and T.S. Eliot. She's less at ease with the flesh-and-blood people she meets, and least of all with herself. But a lucky encounter and a little detective work reveal her true destiny. An autobiographical classic from one of Australia's literary treasures."-- Amazon.com

 


Memoirs of an imaginary friend

Matthew Dicks

At first glance, eight-year-old Max Delaney doesn’t seem that different from his classmates. He likes his teacher, hates the school bully, and doesn’t care for the school cafeteria. Without knowing Max, it’s hard to tell that he has a fully realized imaginary friend  named Budo and is likely placeable on the autism spectrum. Two weeks of  Max’s life are chronicled in Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend , seen through Budo’s surprisingly omniscient eyes. Budo might be visible only to Max, but when one of  Max’s teachers decides to kidnap him, it’s up to Budo and an  equally unlikely cast of  characters to help Max escape. Recalling The Perks of  Being a Wallflower (1999), The Curious Incident of  the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), and Room (2010), Dicks’ novel will appeal to those with a soft spot for vulnerable, kindhearted protagonists. Dicks perfectly captures Max’s autistic qualities, and Budo is an  accomplished narrator. An  incredibly captivating novel about the wonder of  youth and the importance of  friendship, whether real or imagined. Delightfully compelling reading. -- Turza, Stephanie (Booklist, vol 108, number 21, p25)


My life with Bob : flawed heroine keeps book of books, plot ensue

Pamela Paul
818.603 Pau

"Imagine keeping a record of every book you ever read. What would those titles say about you? With humor and warmth, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life. For twenty-eight years, Pamela Paul has been keeping a diary that records the books she reads, rather than the life she leads. Or does it? Over time, it's become clear that this Book of Books, or Bob, as she calls him, tells a much bigger story. For Paul, as for many readers, books reflect her inner life-- her fantasies and hopes, her dreams and ideas. And her life, in turn, influences which books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, diversion or self-reflection, information or entertainment. My Life with Bob isn't about what's in those books; it's about the relationship between books and readers. Bob was with her when she struggled to get through the Norton Anthology of English Literature in college and when she read Anna Karenina while living abroad alone. He was there when she fell in love and much needed when she sought solace in self-help and memoirs like Autobiography of a Face. Through marriage and divorce, remarriage (The Master and Margarita) and parenthood (The Hunger Games), professional setbacks and successes, Bob recorded what she read while all that happened. The diary--now coffee-stained and frayed--is the record of a lifelong love affair with books, and has come to mean more to her than any other material possession. My Life with Bob is a testament to the power of books to provide the perspective, courage, companionship, and ultimately self-knowledge to forge our own path"-- Provided by publisher


The paid companion

Amanda Quick
Qu

The Earl of St. Merryn needs a woman. His intentions are purely practical-he needs someone sensible and suitable to pose as his betrothed for a few weeks among polite society.    
 


The reading promise : my father and the books we shared

Alice Ozma
028.9 Ozm

Named for two literary characters ("Alice" from Lewis Carroll and "Ozma" from L. Frank Baum), the author is the daughter of a Philadelphia-area elementary school librarian. Father and daughter embarked on a streak of reading-out-loud sessions every night before bed as Ozma was growing up--a "streak" that would continue for eight years straight.

 


Sundays at Tiffany's

James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
Patters

Years after spending a lonely childhood at the side of a make-believe best friend named Michael, theater maven's daughter Jane encounters a loving flesh-and-blood Michael who is exactly like the figure of her childhood imagination.
    
 


Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher
791.4392 Fisher Fis

A memoir based on the author's one-woman show describes growing up with celebrity parents, her early success in "Star Wars," battle with addiction and mental illness, turbulent romances, role as a single mother, and struggle for recovery and healing.