In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger”—a companion hired under various guises—walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways.

Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?

In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients.

But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.

Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.

The Anthropologists is a mesmerizing narrative that captures the essence of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in a universal city. Asya and Manu, a young couple, find themselves envisioning a future in a foreign city as they look at apartments. They ponder over the life they wish to create. Can they establish their own traditions and rituals? Whom will they consider family?

Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from a neighborhood park, like an anthropologist studying local customs. Her grandmother's words echo in her mind, questioning her focus on the mundane when she was named for an entire continent. Meanwhile, life in Asya and Manu's home countries goes on—parents age, grandparents fall ill, and nieces and nephews grow up, all just out of their reach.

Yet, the world they are creating in their new city expands, becoming something distinctly theirs. As they broaden the horizons of their lives, they are faced with decisions about what and whom to hold onto, and what must be released. Acclaimed by authors such as Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas is a soulful, often humorous, exploration of modern relationships and the quest for a place to call home.

Table for Two, from the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, presents a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles.

The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, explore themes from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.

In Towles's novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, "Eve in Hollywood" describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood's golden age.

Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.

Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles's canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.

My cock has an appetite. A huge and very particular appetite: Blonde, curvy, and preferably not a fucking liar... (Although, that's a story for another day.) As a high profile lawyer, I don't have time to waste on relationships, so I fulfill my needs by anonymously chatting and sleeping with women I meet online. My rules are simple: One dinner. One night. No repeats. This is only casual sex. Nothing more. Nothing less.

At least it was, until "Alyssa"... She was supposed to be a 27-year-old lawyer, a book hoarder, and completely unattractive. She was supposed to be someone I shared law advice with late at night, someone I could trust with details of my weekly escapades. But then she came into my firm for an interview—a college-intern interview, and everything fucking changed...

Stijn en Carmen behoren tot de hip, healthy and wealthy. Ze hebben beiden een eigen bedrijf en zijn de trotse ouders van de eenjarige Luna. Aan geld en vrienden geen gebrek. Ze leven als God in Amsterdam.

Totdat bij de mooie en optimistische Carmen borstkanker wordt geconstateerd. Op slag verandert hun wereld in een rollercoaster-rit langs artsen en ziekenhuizen.

De hedonistische Stijn gaat trouw mee naar Carmen's chemokuren en bestralingen, maar stort zich ’s avonds in het nachtleven en op de vrouwen van Amsterdam, Miami en Breda.