social isolation

"Even before 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. As the founder of Project UnLonely, Jeremy Nobel unpacks our personal and national experience of loneliness to discover its roots and take steps to find comfort and connection. Dr. Nobel leverages many voices, from pioneering researchers, to leaders in business, education, the arts, and health care, to the lived experience of lonely people of every age, background, and circumstance. He discovers that the pandemic isolated us in ways that were not only physical, and that, at its core, a true sense of loneliness results from a disconnection to the self. He clarifies how meaningful reconnection can be nourished and sustained. And he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity. Make things! Supportive, clear-eyed, and comforting, this is the book we will take into our new normal and rely on for years to come"--Provided by publisher.

"Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm. It is the way of the world. Come close and tell us your dreams. Sanna is a mermaid -- but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna's people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever." --publisher's website.

"Anna is a regular teenaged girl...But one day at track practice, Anna falls unconscious...but instead of falling down, she falls up, defying gravity in the disturbing first symptom of a mysterious disease. Anna's world is turned upside down...Her friends don't seem to understand, running track is out of the question, and the other kids at the disease clinic she attends once a week are a cruel reminder that things will never be the same"--Provided by publisher.

"Like everyone else, twelve-year-old Cleo and her parents are sealed in an apartment without windows or doors. They never leave. They never get visitors. Their food is dropped by drones. So they're safe from the disease that nearly wiped humans from the earth. Safe from everything. The trade-off? They're alone. Thus, when they receive a package clearly meant for someone else--a package containing a substance critical for a stranger's survival--Cleo is stuck. As a surgeon-in training, she knows the clock is ticking. But people don't leave their units. Not ever. Until now"--Publisher.

"Looks at how the [COVID-19] pandemic affected various aspects of daily life. Changes to work, school, entertainment, and more have influenced the younger generations living through them, and these shifts could last far into the future"--Provided by publisher.

When Liling moves from her home in the mountains of China to the big city, her parents cannot afford to send her to school, and she spends her days with her mother, wishing she had a friend--until she sees a girl in a yellow coat, who lives in the next building, comes from a different mountain, and is happy to be Liling's friend.

"Wren and Sage have been left to fend for themselves in their isolated, off-the-grid, primitive cabin in upstate New York after their mother leaves with their sick younger sister to get help from the nearest town. As the months pass their hope vanishes when a stranger comes. The stranger claims to be looking for the girls' mother, and he won't leave without them. The sisters break the rule to never go beyond the forest in order to escape. But once on the other side the sisters must confront what has been hidden from them, and what they're running from"--Provided by publisher.

At cheerleading camp, Hermione is drugged and raped, but she is not sure whether it was one of her teammates or a boy on another team--and in the aftermath she has to deal with the rumors in her small Ontario town, the often awkward reaction of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend, Polly, is gay, and above all the need to remember what happened so that the guilty boy can be brought to justice.

"In this collection of literary slice-of-life horror, five stories explore what happens when one is desperate enough to seek solace and connection in the world of monsters and darkness"-- Provided by publisher.