"Near Strangers is a gorgeous collection, full of vivid and memorable characters who find a clarity in making themselves visible and a path forward in wanting to believe that the world is capable of better than what they’ve seen from it. Marian Crotty’s stories expertly balance the sharp realities of cruelty and disappointment with the human capacity for joy, curiosity and finding possibility in the impossible." —Danielle Evans, author of Office of Historical Corrections

"I loved spending time with the narrators of these eight stories, young people who pretend to misanthropy but are actually deeply in love with the world. Funny, soulful, wry, and more vulnerable than they intend to be, coming of age in the death throes of capitalism, at the rise of gender fluidity, doing their best to forge an identity at an increasingly precarious time." –Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country

"These stories begin with questions about grief, sex, and faith but end with undeniable truths about obsession and delusion. They stare fearlessly into the soft violence of girlhood." —Venita Blackburn, author of Dead in Long Beach, California

"A beautiful collection, raw and particular and surprising. From the electricity of adolescent lust to a middle school essay on Anne Frank, the throughline in these stories is the deep challenge of intimacy, its aspiration, and its compromise. Crotty’s stories reminded me of how inevitable it is that we fail to reach each other fully and how essential it is to try." —Emma Snyder, Owner, The Ivy Bookshop