Would you recommend a few that are beginner friendly and available at my local board game shop?
Wingspan if you don't want to be aggressive against other players
Cascadia for shorter game that supports low player counts
Azul is another shorter game
The isle of cats is a personal favorite, very neat game about packing cats on your boat
Red Rising has an excellent board game if you've ever read the book.
Games around the 3-4 players seem to have best flow and pace. I may buy wyrm (sister game to wingspan) just for the card designs.
I did play a game of Twilight Imperium for 12 hours, which I won. Mostly newbie’s but with a host who’s provided guidance on the rules. Great fun but perhaps something to work up to.
Even when a player situation wasn’t looking good, he took them aside and pointed out options for them to get back in the hunt for victory points.
It’s very easy for a player to go “rogue” and spoil the game for the other players.
Kind-of a board game: 7th continent
Pandemic Legacy for one of the best experiences you'll have with the same group of friends over months (cooperative, play through once over 12-24 sittings). The game builds in complexity as you play so it starts reasonably simple (though the first season starts with the basic ruleset of Pandemic so if you've played that it's a head start but not necessary).
Kingdomino and Cascadia for quicker terrain building games, I consider these fairly similar though Kingdomino is quicker and simpler. These I can play with anyone.
Paperback if you already like word games like Scrabble etc, and want to dip into playing a deck building game.
The Crew if you like trick-taking card games, it's a co-op variant to games like Bridge or Euchre.
Carcassone is an oldie but goodie. Very social compared to many competitive games, as though it's turn based everyone wants to have their say for what you should do with your piece. Compared to e.g. Wingspan where you're largely ignoring/out of the loop for what's going on with everyone else all the time.
Diplomacy is a masterpiece and surprisingly beginner-friendly, but it's very hard to get a game going, cause first off you need exactly 7 people. I played online with friends on Backstabbr.com, and yeah it only took 5 minutes a day, but each game lasted 1-2 months. Or it'd be 2-4 hours in-person.
Designate one player as the seller of an imaginary product and one as a potential buyer. The buyer needs a random secret number B from 50-100 which is the max they can pay, and the seller needs S from 0-50 which is the min they'll sell for. Use an RNG if you have one, otherwise you can do it yourself: Have both think of two random numbers from 0-100. Each says one number but not the other. Add the other person's number to your secret one, mod by 50, then add 50 if you're the buyer.
Negotiate over the price until either a sale is made at P or someone unilaterally kills the deal. Seller wins (P - 50) points, buyer wins (50 - P). If the deal dies, seller loses S points, buyer loses (B - 50). I hope I remembered these right. Then switch sides and repeat.
All of these are very inexpensive and rules light and very approachable for beginners.