True Modern

A joyful collection of the most popular, provocative and unforgettable essays from the New York Times 'Modern Love' column. A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man's promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her 70s looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships.

British mother Rosie Ayliffe thought her 21-year-old daughter, Mia, would be safe travelling around Australia on a gap year. But Mia wanted to extend her visa and in order to do that needed to find 88 days of work on a farm - a requirement that would lead to catastrophic events. Four short days after Mia moved to a hostel in Queensland to take a job on a sugarcane farm, she was brutally murdered.

“Bailey Ann Mayfair, when are you going to marry me?” With those words, Bailey Ann’s already messy world began to spin out of control. The dutiful oldest daughter, Bailey Ann is the one who came home to care for her parents, but she’s never felt more lost. Always the perfect child, she did everything the right way, including giving up the boy she loved. But Finn Malloy is back in town, too, and even he’s not sure where he stands with Bailey Ann. She once cut him so deep he never thought he’d recover. Now that she’s back, though… he can’t stop thinking about what might have...