Strangers

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 IN VOGUE, BBC, NEW YORK TIMES, W MAGAZINE, TOWN & COUNTRY

‘A beautifully written eulogy for the loss of a relationship’ Joyce Carol Oates

‘Beautiful… devastating … Strangers reads with all the momentum and colour of water-tight literary fiction’ British Vogue

How do we go on when a loved one betrays us?

On a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden s husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her.

His decision shocked Belle to her core: she believed he was a happy man, a committed partner, and a devoted father to their three children. She thought he was a man who had settled into the life he had always wanted: a successful career, summers spent at their beloved home on Martha s Vineyard, lots of tennis. Overnight, he transformed from her steady companion into a stranger.

As she pieces her life together in the wake of a loss she had never imagined coming, she finds she is much stronger than she ever expected.

Exploring the transformation of a shy, quiet girl, nicknamed Belle the Good to a powerful, brave, determined woman who has learned to use her voice to expose the patriarchal structures that have forced women to be discreet and compliant for far too long, Strangers is a must-read memoir of self-discovery.