From the author of the memoir Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there—thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship. After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home—it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone. The thirty-eight-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House, where she brings hospitality to the expatriates, misfits, missionaries, and mercenaries who stroll through its doors. She’s especially grateful that the busy days allow her to forget Tommy, the love of her life, who left her in pursuit of money and adventure. Working alongside Sunny is the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son—who, unbeknownst to her, is facing his own religious doubts. Into the café come Isabel, a British journalist on the trail of a risky story; Jack, who left his family back home in Michigan to earn “danger pay” as a consultant; and Candace, a wealthy and well-connected American whose desire to help threatens to cloud her judgment. When Yazmina, a young Afghan from a remote village, is kidnapped and left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her into the café and gives her a home—but Yazmina hides a secret that could put all their lives in jeopardy. As this group of men and women discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they’ll form an unlikely friendship that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire country. Brimming with Deborah Rodriguez’s remarkable gift for depicting the nuances of life in Kabul, and filled with vibrant characters that readers will truly care about, A Cup of Friendship is the best kind of fiction—full of heart yet smart and thought-provoking.

The brand new novel from the author of the Top Ten Sunday Times bestseller The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. The honest, entertaining and life-affirming sequel to The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, featuring the same loveable cast of characters, from internationally bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez. In a little coffee shop in war-torn Kabul, five very different women unite for one important cause: to protect the women in Afghanistan. Now back home in the US, SUNNY, the founder, is finding it difficult to settle and dreams of returning to her beloved coffee shop. SHEA is haunted by a traumatic event that makes her renounce her Afghan heritage. YAZMINA, the coffee shop's new owner, wants to use her newfound security to help other women avoid the fate she narrowly escaped. ZARA, promised in marriage to a violent man she's never met, arrives at the coffee shop seeking sanctuary. And HALAJAN, the grandmother still breaking all the rules, is secretly learning to drive . . . Together, these five women set out to change their lives, and the lives of women in Afghanistan, for ever.