It's early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side, and the alienation of Moshfegh's unnamed young protagonist from others is nearly complete when she initiates her yearlong siesta, during which time she experiences limited personal interactions. Her parents have died; her relationships with her bulimic best friend Reva, an ex-boyfriend, and her drug-pushing psychiatrist are unwholesome. As her pill-popping intensifies, so does her isolation and determination...

Walden first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and-to some degree-a manual for self-reliance. Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months,...

"Meet Gus, a gosling who likes to be by himself. But when his adventures lead him to a turtle's nest, he's in for some unexpected companionship!"--

A boy enjoys living quietly by himself at The End of the World until Mr. Constantine Shimmer, "Professional Visionary," builds an inn and an amusement park, demanding that tourists come and have "Fun Without End!"

Grandmother wants so badly to be left alone to finish the knitting for her grandchildren that she leaves her tiny home and her big family to journey to the moon and beyond to find peace and quiet to finish her knitting.

Oliver is different. He enjoys his solitude. He likes playing with his friends, who are puppets, stuffed animals, and other toys. With his rich imagination, Oliver's day is never dull. But maybe toys don't always give a boy everything he needs. Maybe he needs another kind of companion. Will Oliver discover a way to be, well, different? When his tennis ball rolls across the lawn into the yard of the girl next door, he just might be surprised.

Lila lives far away from the rest of the world on a cliff overlooking the sea, and when she wishes upon a star it is only for a bag of flour, but one night she becomes more adventurous.

Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

In Silent Compassion: Finding God in Contemplation, Rohr focuses on finding God in the depths of silence, and shares that the divine silence is more than the absence of noise. That silence has a life of its own, in which we are invited into its living presence, wholeness of being, and peace it brings. This silence can absorb paradoxes, contradictions, and the challenges of life, he says, connecting us with the great chain of being. Rohr adds that...

A memoir by an award-winning poet describes her retreats to a primitive mountain cabin to write in solitude and find answers to life's big questions, describing how a fire forced her to reconcile her conflicting needs for isolation and community.