Aging Fiction

Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all - and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was.

In a New York Times review of Alice Notley’s 2007 collection In the Pines, Joel Brouwer wrote that “the radical freshness of Notley’s poems stems not from what they talk about, but how they talk, in a stream-of-consciousness style that both describes and dramatizes the movement of the poet’s restless mind, leaping associatively from one idea or sound to the next.” Notley’s new collection is at once a window into the sources of her telepathic and visionary poetics, and a memoir through poems of her Paris-based life between 2000 and 2017, when she finished treatment for her first breast cancer.

Veteran con artist Roy spots an obvious easy mark when he meets Betty, a wealthy widow, online. In no time at all, he's moved into Betty's lovely cottage and is preparing to accompany her on a romantic trip to Europe. Betty's grandson disapproves of their blossoming relationship, but Roy is sure this scheme will be a success. He knows what he's doing. As this remarkable feat of storytelling weaves together Roy's and Betty's futures, it also unwinds their pasts.

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.

From #1 New York Times best-selling humorist Jill Conner Browne comes a hilarious life maintenance program designed to help women navigate our hyper-visual society's obsessions with body image, clothing, and personal appearance. Getting and keeping that Queenly Look is no small feat - a good portion of our lives is devoted to our hair, our skin tone, our figure flaws, and our clothes.

Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime and is losing his “stoke.” The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still idolize the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. One night, while driving home from a bar after one too many, Joe accidentally kills a stranger near Waimea, a tragedy that sends his life out of control. As the repercussions of the accident spiral ever wider, Joe's devoted girlfriend, Olive, throws herself into uncovering the dead man’s identity and helping Joe find vitality and refuge in the waves again.

Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children, and seen the arrival of 17 grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair. Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past.

For Sale: Farm Fresh Freakouts When Millie's property suddenly produces an abundance of herbs, she sets out to share her good fortune. If she had her way, her most expensive item would be absolutely free, but her husband has a plan to pay for a shiny new tractor. Against her better judgment, Millie hangs out a shingle and passes her bounty on to local tourists. For a fee. When customers begin experiencing anomalies, she has to take a step back to consider her products...and her CEO. Dig into Wisdom of the Sages, the second book in the Back Forty Bliss series, and find out what's up with ...

Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage, he hands over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan, but, as relations sour, he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions. Now, imprisoned in Meadowmeade, an upscale sanatorium in rural England, with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels.

If Virginia could have chosen to accept or discard all the changes that came her way, she gladly would have let most of them pass right by herself and her family. She loves her life, living on the farm with her beloved Jonathan and their children, not far from her parents and her grandparents. But a change that is tearing at her heart is the gradual but steady physical decline in Grandma Marty and Grandpa Clark.

Older people have special issues regarding work, relationships, health, money, and the meaning of life. These short-short stories address them.

StumpStrong: An Epistolary Novel of First Loves, Second Chances, and Finding Strength in Roots From a “fresh and fun new voice in women’s fiction”: a divorcee finds her voice and courage thanks to an account of war and survival out of her family history. Patricia Moore is coming of age. The age is menopause. And she might not survive it. Her growing pains include not only hot flashes but sharp pangs of loneliness. Her daughter is away at college. Her dear Sheltie, Zoomie, still loves her ex-husband, who’s got new muscles and a new girlfriend. And then there’s the sudden, teenage-...

Meet Claire: fifty-two, desperate to do something new and get a fresh start. Enter the chance to go to Rome: Home to a struggling convent facing a precipitous end, the city beckons Claire, who's long had a complicated relationship with religion, including a “missed connection” with convent life in her teens. Once in Rome, she finds a group of funny, fearless nuns in a gorgeous villa, beautiful runs throughout a color-saturated city, and a chance to reflect. It all leads her to an unexpected question—should she join the convent?

Storm Winds is the third book in the Home to Clare Harbor series. It is the continuing story of family, friends, and strangers who are drawn together by forces over which they have no control. They have weathered what many believed to be the storm of the century. Now they face a storm of another kind that could pose an even greater threat. Senator Gareth Dyersen is determined to do everything in his power to insure the safety of everyone who has taken refuge in his mountain home. They are his family, friends who over the years have become family, and strangers who are now friends. Then he ...

The Bennett Women is an absorbing portrayal of three women who are at a crossroad with one another and the world around them. Muriel Bennett is a feisty eighty-two-year-old artist who struggles to maintain her independence. For the past forty years, she has happily resided at her Oregon lakefront home. She wants to live on her terms, but soon discovers how little control she has over her life. Susanne Bennett is a fifty-four-year-old CEO of a Fortune 500 technology company located in California. She leads more than three hundred thousand employees worldwide, but has little influence over ...

Darya can’t help it. She sees things other people don’t. It’s hard to protect a woman who won’t let her bodyguard go with her, but there could be a reason for that, and Slade is pretty sure what that reason is. His name is Nick, a scientist who works for Darya in Mexico City and persuades her to take a dangerous side trip with him to Guatemala. A Food and Drug Administration employee has been bribed to approve a drug. It’s not the first time he’s paid to get a drug on the market, even when tests show the drug kills people. So much for healing. Kidnapping and murder aren’t all ...

In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, 70-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: Reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved preschool take over his barn. As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents, and teachers, he must reexamine the solitary life he has made in the three decades since the sudden death of his wife. No longer can he remain aloof from his community.

The last thing Maria expected when she returned to the United States from France was to be arrested at the airport. Is she fated to spend the rest of her life in prison? Follow the loveable yet eccentric private investigator, Slade Kelly, (a readers' favorite), as he tries to keep Maria from going to prison. The story moves at a rapid pace, from the ghettos of Chicago to the beaches of Florida, from the streets of Los Angeles to the lush gardens of New York city. Each twist and turn comes with its own cast of colorful characters, from sleazy men in the Mafia to hot, desperate women, who ...

This award-winning anthology of poetry and prose takes a new look at being a woman - particularly an aging woman - in a society that prizes and glorifies youth. The works are by both younger writers looking forward in time and writers who have experienced the joys and challenges of growing older. This international best seller was put together by editor Sandra Martz who selected the collection's pieces from thousands of submitted manuscripts.

Decisions is the twelfth novella in the ongoing story of the Andersen family. Livia Andersen was a woman who held her family together with a quiet smile and an iron will. It’s only been months since her death and the four children she leaves behind continue to grapple with the shifting changes in their lives now that she’s gone. Disappointments she kept to herself are slowly coming to light. And the grandchildren she adored are struggling for answers that aren’t always easily found. Chris Andersen has always looked at life as an adventure and the unknowns just around the corner as ...