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The Lager Queen of Minnesota: A Novel

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By J. Ryan Stradal – Pamela Dorman Books (2019)

Thirsty for a feel-good, intergenerational, family saga? This is a story of love, hardship and pure Minnesotan can-do. Estranged for 50 years, sisters Edith and Helen are both aging into poverty—one, financial, and one, emotional. Edith has spent her life struggling to make ends meet, never quite able to explore her own dreams. Helen has scrapped and schemed to make her lifelong dream of brewing beer a success, but the end of that road has turned out differently than she expected. Then there’s Diana, Edith’s granddaughter, who lurches her way through a childhood clouded by grief and delinquency into a career she never expected. When Diana is unable to nurture her fledgling brewery, Edith and her friends (all over 60) step in. None has ever brewed beer; some of them don’t even like it. None of them blink an eye. And here’s the best part: no one tells these women that they are too old to do it. Along the way, the women all learn a bit more about themselves and what they want to do with their lives (including making beers they would actually want to drink). Edith, Helen and Diana’s stories intertwine with interesting facts about beer and with what it’s like to grow up and grow old. This is a refreshing story that all can enjoy, even if your preferred brew is tea.

 

Don’t Ever Get Old: A Mystery

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By Daniel Friedman–Minotaur Books, 2013

This really hits the high notes for being a clever crime novel that’s also an honest portrayal of an aging, opinionated gumshoe. Long retired at 87, Buck Schatz had a decorated career with the Memphis police department. He’s known as a no-nonsense detective who still holds the record for killing the most suspects. (Buck has no regrets, they deserved it.) A Jewish veteran of World War II, Buck endured incarceration in a Nazi prison camp. Now he discovers that his torturer has escaped Germany and has been living in the United States. Buck enlists his grandson, Tequila, to teach him how to use technology to foil his nemesis. Soon Buck and Tequila are murder suspects themselves. Throughout their adventure, Buck grudgingly accepts his failing memory and deteriorating body (readers will appreciate his sense of humor about his mortality) while relying on his still-sharp intuition. Buck is a colorful character who doesn’t shy away from candid observations, often wickedly funny. Read this novel somewhere you can freely laugh out loud. And if you love it like we did, you’ll be happy to know there’s a sequel: Don’t Ever Look Back (2014).

Women in Sunlight

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By Frances Mayes—Crown, 2018

If you were one of the millions of readers who dreamed of moving to a fixer-upper in Italy after reading Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun (1996), get ready to pack your bags because she’s done it again. In her new novel, three single women are considering the next chapter of their lives during an exploratory visit to an upscale retirement community. Camille, 69, Susan, 64, and Julia, 59, are each moving on after personal tragedies. Despite knowing each other just a very short time, they decide to rent an Italian villa together. They are conflicted about the commitment to full retirement; the trip will serve to sow some oats and get the wanderlust from their systems. This story revolves around the power of place, lush with description, and of mature and supportive friendships. Ahh, the menus, the wine, the shopping, the freedom. How lovely it is for our trio: they seem to eat without gaining weight and furnish a villa, buy art and tour the countryside with indifference to the cost. (It is fiction, after all, and a glorious escape.)

Love and Other Consolation Prizes: A Novel

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By Jamie Ford — Ballantine Books, 2017

Ernest Young, a mixed-race, bastard child in the early 1900s, travels alone on a freighter from China to the United States, sent by his mother, who is desperate for him to escape certain poverty and famine. This well-researched work of historical fiction tells the story of Ernest’s journey: placed in an orphanage, auctioned off at the world’s fair; and of his life in a brothel and all the years after, until he’s an older man, when he is confronted by his daughter, who discovers pieces of the truth Ernest has never divulged. As he relives his memories, he wonders if looking at the past could help his wife, who has dementia. And would that be a good thing?

This novel is a story of a husband’s devotion to his beloved wife and the memories they’ve kept between them. It may make you question how you defend the decisions you have made in difficult times, or how you might choose to share the less-flattering pieces of your life with your children. In the end, do you think an uncomfortable truth should be a burden taken to the grave?

The Housekeeper and the Professor

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By Yoko Ogawa — Picador, 2009

Translated from Japanese, so elegant and spare that it’s quite remarkable, this novella should not be missed. Neither main character is ever named. The housekeeper narrates the story of the professor, who retains his brilliant mind after a car accident but is left stuck in 1975 and can hold onto nothing new beyond the last 80 minutes. The housekeeper, a high school dropout with a 10-year-old son, must reintroduce herself at least once a day. Despite the difference in their academic backgrounds, they use mathematics to put systems in place for the professor to live with some autonomy. He bonds with her son, whom he calls Root for his flat head that resembles the square-root symbol. The two connect over a mutual love of baseball, which is, after all, a game of numbers. This story extolls the value and simplicity of living in the present and shows how we can unite with one another over common ground if we just slow down long enough to recognize it.

The Dollhouse: A Novel

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By Fiona Davis — Dutton, 2017

Aspiring career women of the 1950s often left home to attend secretarial school or to seek jobs in New York City. The times called for young, unmarried women to live in supervised boarding houses to preserve their reputations, and the glamorous Barbizon Hotel was one such residence. The women experienced unfathomable sexism, yet they played as hard as they worked, with forbidden escorts and visits to jazz clubs in “bad” parts of town. This novel centers around the Barbizon, which was renovated to upscale condominiums in 1981. A few original tenants, now in their 80s, like Darby McLaughlin, were grandmothered in and still live on the fourth floor. New renter Rose Lewin, a journalist, is intrigued by an unsolved mystery from the ’50s and is determined to solve it with Darby’s help. Readers will enjoy this look at vintage Manhattan as the duo’s reconnaissance takes us back to the hotel’s heyday, illuminating the lives of residents and staff at that time in the city’s history.

The Story of Arthur Truluv: A Novel

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By Elizabeth Berg – Random House, 2017

If it seems as though the bookshelves are full of crotchety-old-people stories, and you’re left aching to believe that all people don’t end up curmudgeons, Elizabeth Berg’s The Story of Arthur Truluv may be just what the doctor (or librarian) ordered. Every day, 85-year-old Arthur Moses leaves his garden, packs a lunch and takes the bus to the cemetery to talk to Nola, his late wife. His only other regular companion is Lucille, an 80-year-old neighbor who still pines over a lost love. In the cemetery, Maddie, an 18-year-old rebel with poor taste in suitors, avoids the bullies at school and a cold father at home. When she hears Arthur talking to Nola, she names him Truluv, and an unlikely friendship forms, a kinship of those who have loved and lost. Arthur is a found treasure in Maddie’s sad life, and ultimately she gives purpose to his. Soon Arthur and Lucille support Maddie and give her what she’s always craved, while Maddie helps them to live independently at home. The intergenerational piece of this story is moving and reminds us how we all crave acceptance and a listening ear. Read this one to restore your faith that aging won’t leave you grumpy.

The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old

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By Hendrik Groen – Michael Joseph, 2016

Do you ever imagine a typical day in a care home? According to 83-year-old resident Hendrik Groen, there is no such thing. He’s keeping a diary of life in the North Amsterdam pensioners’ apartments, and no secret is unwritten, including what he wishes he could say aloud if he were not so unfailingly polite. Hendrik’s diary is fiction but reads like autobiography. Facing aging head on, Hendrik and friends find humor where they can, whether it be dumping cake in the aquarium or watching the “old biddies” loosen the salt shaker on an unsuspecting dining companion. That’s not to say the diary is all fluff. Hendrik labors over buying the right mobility scooter and ponders the ethics of euthanasia when friends are ill. We can learn a great deal from Hendrik; his contentment comes from the give-and-take of genuine friendship, having a sense of purpose and always having a plan to move forward. The book is so thoroughly delightful and big-hearted, I can’t wait to read the sequel, On the Bright Side (2018).

My Mrs. Brown: A Novel

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By William Norwich – Simon and Schuster, 2016

Mrs. Brown is a drab and proper widow, living an invisible existence picking up after others in a small-town beauty shop, where she hears everything and says nothing. Staff and clients couldn’t care less about her in her thrift-shop clothes. An excellent seamstress with an eye for detail, she takes in sewing work to supplement her modest income. When the town’s society maven dies, Mrs. Brown helps clean out the mansion. In doing so, she spies an elegant, timeless Oscar de la Renta dress—and she knows she must have that dress, even though she cannot articulate why. This is a sweet story that takes you from pitying Mrs. B to cheering her on to get the dress. We’ve probably all had a have-to-have-it moment. Curiously, this was hers. It is in the pursuit of the dress that the real Mrs. Brown is awakened and appreciated. This little book, like Mrs. Brown herself, is not to be dismissed.

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer: A Novella

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By Fredrik Backman — Atria, 2016

Just when you think you’ve read all of the books you’ll ever need on dementia and the long goodbye, along comes this glorious novella from Fredrik Backman, easily the best thing to come to the United States from Sweden since IKEA. Not initially intending to share, Backman wrote this to explore his feelings on familial love and loss. Readers familiar with his work (A Man Called Ove, Britt-Marie Was Here) will recognize his positive portrayals of older adults. Here, on a bench with his beloved grandson Noah, Grandfather realizes his memory is slipping and worries he’ll forget the loves of his life. Understanding what’s at stake, Noah tries to help his grandfather hold on to the happy times. Through a shared love of mathematics, the pair can face infinity and the concept of forever without fear. This gem is sprinkled with illustrations, but it’s the poetry of Backman’s words that create a visually memorable experience, to be read, reread and shared.

 

The One-in-a-Million Boy

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By Monica Wood – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016

Quinn is a professional musician, perennially on the road, who feels remorse for missing so much of his sweet and unusual son’s too-short life. Now that it’s too late, as penance, he takes on a Boy Scout commitment his son had made and meets 104-year-old Ona Vitkus, a contrary, reclusive woman who has seen more than her share of well-intentioned Scouts. While filling Ona’s birdfeeders, Quinn learns that his son had endeared himself to Ona and had started a recording of her life for a school project. He also discovers his son was a savant, of sorts, when it came to the Guinness Book of World Records, and Quinn takes up the 8-year-old’s quest to get Ona into the record book. Sentimental without ever being sappy, this is a heartwarming, heartbreaking story of friendship and of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone.

The Guts

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By Roddy Doyle – Viking Adult, 2014

Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle reprises hero Jimmy Rabbitte in The Guts, a sequel to The Commitments (Vintage, 1989). Matured now, Rabbitte is a 50-something father with a wife who loves him and a mostly good relationship with his extended family, in particular his dad. Rabbitte just found out he has cancer. A once-popular musician himself, he now makes a living connecting people to the old music artists and albums they love. His work takes him across Ireland where he reconnects with a former bandmate and a long-ago love. Spurred by his health crisis, he also seeks to reunite with his estranged brother. This is an Irish tale of middle-age awakenings, driven in no small part by his diagnosis. You don’t need to read the original to enjoy this sequel. Doyle’s colorful language may turn off some readers but this novel is worth reading for anyone who enjoys a strong character and a good plot.

This is Your Life, Harriet Chance

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By Jonathan Evison – Algonquin Books, 2016

Harriet Chance is a delightful 78-year-old who enjoys a drink and talking to her late husband, Bernard. When Harriet learns that Bernard won an Alaskan cruise, she consults with him about going—she’s not a traveler, after all—and decides to take the trip. Once on board, Harriet is joined by a tedious, estranged daughter and is confronted with the fact that most of her life has not been as it seemed to her.

The story is told in the format of the ’50s television program “This is Your Life,” complete with the slow reveal of the contestant’s lifetime of hits and misses. Author Evison’s third-person narration mimics a television host’s as Harriet is laid bare as a wife, mother and friend. This bittersweet novel is a story of regret, redemption and self-forgiveness, with humor and memorable characters. It’s fun and hopeful and very hard to put down.

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation

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By Elizabeth Berg – Random House, 2008

Award-winning writer Elizabeth Berg shines in this book of short stories, told as you would talk to a friend at the kitchen table. One poignant and touching story tells the tale of two women in their 80s, friends for 50 years, who have accepted without words that one has reached the end of her life. In another story, a defiant dieter goes AWOL for a day, eats what makes her happy, if not satisfied, and returns to Weight Watchers with no one the wiser. And in another, an unsolicited recipe for pie is delivered in a meandering letter from an old family friend. In voices—each different, yet familiar—these 13 stories touch on many issues of a woman’s life. You will want to curl up with tea and tissues to savor every one.

How It All Began

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By Penelope Lively – Viking, 2012

A chain of events unfolds in London. A 76-year-old literacy volunteer named Charlotte is mugged and forced to convalesce at the home of her adult daughter, Rose. Unfulfilled, reliable Rose works for Lord Peters, an aging academic trying desperately to stay credible. His niece, Marion, filling in for Rose while Charlotte recovers, becomes a victim of a scam that could devastate her financially. Housebound Charlotte accepts Anton as a private student, and soon Rose becomes intrigued by her mother’s pupil, a hardworking immigrant hoping to improve his English for better job prospects. Unexpected developments keep the reader turning pages and continuously surprise this wonderfully developed cast of characters, all either in advanced years or in the midst of midlife changes.

Instructions for a Heatwave

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By Maggie O’Farrell – Knopf, 2013 

Maggie O’Farrell is a master of creating recognizable, flawed characters, and here she delivers once again. Gretta and Robert are long married with grown children; they have an easy routine to their days. Like their fellow Londoners, the couple are struggling to deal with the summer’s unrelenting heat and drought. But is the oppressive weather what caused Robert to go for a walk one morning and simply vanish without a word? His disappearance brings the children—Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife—back under the same roof for the first time in years to help Gretta find their father. The heat makes things seem too heavy to carry but each family member lightens their load with every weighty secret that is revealed.

Emily, Alone

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By Stewart O’Nan – Viking Adult, 2011 

Stewart O’Nan has a knack for crafting seemingly mundane and minute details into such thoughtful prose that his words become etched in a reader’s mind. In this novel, Emily is a widow in her 80s who has given up driving, resigned to relying on her sister-in-law, Arlene, as chauffeur. When Arlene faints at their regular lunch buffet, Emily drives home. This single moment sparks a renewal of her independence. With an ironic sense that she is reversing her dependence on others at an advanced age, what follows is a year in the life of Emily Maxwell. O’Nan’s depiction is so believable, you may be convinced that he was an older woman in a previous life, and so intimate, it feels like spying. Has O’Nan offered us a look into our own aging, perhaps?

Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale

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By Lynda Rutledge – Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 2012 

Septuagenarian Faith Bass Darling—once spunky and vibrant, now merely eccentric—has dementia, and her memories are unreliable at best. On the eve of Y2K, acting on a message from God, reclusive Faith puts all of her worldly possessions out on the front lawn to sell for a fraction of their considerable worth. Estranged daughter Claudia returns to find what’s left of her family estate in shambles, a legacy extinguished. Her mother is now virtually unreachable, proving even old money and good health can’t buy a happy ending. The story features well-developed and endearing characters, revealing a history of a privileged family life tinged with sadness and misunderstanding. Author Rutledge ultimately asks us to consider: what is left of who we are if our memories fail and our possessions no longer hold any value? What if we gave them all away?

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

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By Helen Simonson – Random House, 2010 

Celebrate the agelessness of falling in love with this later-life romance. Widowed from long, happy marriages, retired Major Ernest Pettigrew and Pakistani shopkeeper Mrs. Jasmina Ali are charming, proper and delightfully quick-witted. In Austen-esque Edgecombe St. Mary, an English country town steeped in tradition, locals are uncomfortable with any change that challenges their conservative way of life. Predictably, this opposites-attract romance is thwarted by both society and family, particularly by the Major’s despicably pretentious son and the righteous Alis. In this stellar debut novel, Simonson depicts an enviable stage in life when one’s happiness trumps the approval of others, but not without a price. Touching on issues of class and cultural bias, at its core, this is a tale of a fortunate second chance at love.

The Roots of the Olive Tree: A Novel

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By Courtney Miller Santo – William Morrow, 2012

Imagine five generations of first-born women living under one roof. At 112, Anna Keller is the second-oldest person alive: her daughter, Betts, is 90 and great-great-granddaughter, Erin, is in her 20s. Is their longevity due to genetics or to a diet rich in olive oil from the family farm? A curious geneticist aims to use the information he uncovers to help others live extended, healthy lives. His research turns up some long-held family secrets in the process. The women have their unresolved issues and petty grievances, as one might imagine, but the characters are credible and keeping them straight is as easy as ABC—Anna, Betts, Callie, Deb and Erin. To see a centenarian portrayed as a vital, competent, independent woman is a treat, and you may be tempted to add olive oil to your diet and beauty regimen like the age-defying Keller women.

So Much for That

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By Lionel Shriver – HarperCollins, 2010 

Only the bravest writer would consider America’s broken health care system fodder for fiction. Lionel Shriver brings us Shep Knacker, a generous, middle-aged everyman who has sacrificed and invested, planning an early retirement in Africa. Plane tickets in hand, he is confronted with news of his wife’s terminal illness. Shep’s relationships with family and friends are tested in the ordeal of his wife’s battle with cancer. His health insurance is inadequate, his job is demoralizing and the caregiving is exhausting. The characters are real; the dialogue, intelligent, cynical and witty; the issue, so relevant but uncomfortable. Chronicled at the start of each chapter is Shep’s rapidly dwindling Merrill Lynch account, begging you to consider: just how much is one life worth? This fictional account that feels all too real shows how the burden of health care is borne by the survivors.

Please Look After Mom

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By Kyung-Sook Shin – Vintage, 2012

Do you really know your mother? After reading this story, you may want to think again. Widely acclaimed in her native Korea, Kyung-Sook Shin debuts in the United States with a moving story of a woman who disappears in a train station. As family members search for Park So-nyo, it becomes clear that they know very little about her. The true humanity of the missing woman comes to light, told from four perspectives: her two adult children, her husband and Park So-nyo herself. How will they find someone who has been all but invisible to them while wearing the cloak of wife and mother? As the characters peel away Park So-nyo’s intricate, private layers, we readers may find ourselves looking at the women in our own lives through the lens of their discoveries and realizing that wives and mothers everywhere have hidden worlds we would never think to imagine.

Orphan Train

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By Christina Baker Kline – HarperCollins, 2013

At age 90, Vivian Daly’s serene life doesn’t suggest the challenges she faced after her family perished in a 1920s tenement fire in New York City. Orphan Train reveals a woeful piece of American history and is thorough in its depiction of the terrible truth: Vivian was one of a quarter million orphaned or abandoned children placed on Midwest-bound trains, under the guise of finding them a better life. Decades later, Molly, a rudderless, angst-filled teen from foster care, as penance for a petty crime, does community service wherein she helps neighbor Vivian sort through the detritus of her attic. In the boxes of albums, Molly sees there’s more to Vivian than she expected. Despite the years between them, the two find they have much in common, enough for Molly to believe that her future might hold promise. We love it that the pair can have a meaningful, intergenerational connection.

The Bird Sisters

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By Rebecca Rasmussen – Broadway, 2011 

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of two sisters, now in their 70s, who still live in the house where they grew up. Called the Bird Sisters because they rehabilitate wounded and dying birds, they are eccentrics in a small Wisconsin town of gently quirky inhabitants. Their story is told in chapters that alternate between the present and 1947, when the girls were teenagers trying to fix their parents’ broken marriage. They reflect on a cousin in fragile health whose summer visit changed them all. These charming, naïve sisters thought they knew what their futures held: a secure and predictable married life for sweet Millie and adventure for ornery Twiss. Neither got what she wanted. The Bird Sisters is a tale of secrets, sisterly love and devotion, and of two women you’ll remember long after you close the book.

The Leisure Seeker

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By Michael Zadoorian – HarperCollins, 2009 

You will wish you owned a roadside stop along Route 66 so you could meet Ella and John Robina, married a half-century, as they run away from home on their final road trip to Disneyland. Against all advice, from medical to familial, the defiant, independent, 80-something Robinas navigate their RV from Detroit to California without regret or apology. Ella, who has refused further treatment for cancer, is stubborn and often in pain. She’s sarcastic and loving, angry and tender. Weaving in and out of coherence and traffic is John, his ability to drive not yet affected by progressing dementia, but not always sure where he is, either on the map or in life. Neither sappy nor morbid, Michael Zadoorian portrays these romantic octogenarians as rich, complex characters. Filled with dark humor and the sense of impending tragedy, The Leisure Seeker remains the love story of a couple determined to live, and end, their lives in their own way.

The Widower’s Tale

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By Julia Glass – Pantheon, 2010 

Fans of National Book Award winner Julia Glass know how richly drawn and complex her characters can be. The Widower’s Tale weaves together the lives of the family and acquaintances of widower Percival Darling, a 70-something retired librarian. Percy is erudite and cynical. At his core, he is a family man with compassion for his motherless adult daughters and his beloved grandson, all with dramas of their own. Thirty years after his wife’s drowning, Percy falls for a single mother and her adopted son. Subplots of eco-terrorism, cancer, class, immigration and gay marriage are pulled together to a satisfying conclusion. In creating a septuagenarian who emails and swims in the nude, Glass avoids the obvious stereotypes and has created a very memorable and attractive patriarch.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

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By Walter Mosley – Riverhead Hardcover, 2010 

There is no sugar coating in this realistic tale of a man stuck in the past with seemingly nothing to live for. A hermit in a filthy apartment, 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey is dealing with violence and abandonment, compounded by his spiral into paralyzing dementia. Ptolemy has a secret fortune hidden away, but his family dynamic is as uncertain as his memory. When his beloved, caregiving nephew is killed in a drive-by shooting, a beautiful, street-smart, yet selfless teenage runaway, Robyn, comes to help Ptolemy. She wants the best for him and her presence helps clear the cobwebs. A shady doctor offers Ptolemy an experimental drug that would restore his memory but end his life in just a few weeks. When Ptolemy chooses to embrace his final days with clarity and purpose, he leaves Robyn to wonder if she has done right by him. Author Mosley delivers with credible dialogue and characters we truly care about.

Breaking Out of Bedlam

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By Leslie Larson – Crown, 2010 

Meet cantankerous Cora, taken from her home by well-meaning adult children who worry about her over-medicating and disregard for personal hygiene. At age 82 and 300 pounds, widowed Cora is placed, against her wishes, into assisted living. In a journal gifted to her by a grandchild, Cora reveals the story of her life from her shotgun wedding at 17, through the loss of her husband, and to her arrival at the Palisades nursing home. The staff and residents are scrutinized with Cora’s brand of candor and profanity—you’ll shake your head at Cora’s contempt as she sets the record straight and begins life anew. Kudos for Leslie Larson for a refreshing take on a stage of life so often portrayed disparagingly. How nice to see Cora learning, growing and reinventing herself!

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

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By Rachel Joyce – Random House, 2012 

This tale is comfort food for a reader’s soul. Harold Fry is a recently retired salesman coexisting with his chronically discontent, intolerant wife. Out of the blue, a goodbye letter arrives from Harold’s former coworker Queenie Hennessey, who is dying in hospice 600 miles away. Ever-conflicted about the right thing to do, milquetoast Harold pens a response but finds himself unable to mail the letter. A chance encounter with a stranger leaves Harold convinced that he must say goodbye in person, and that he must walk to keep Queenie alive. Determined and single-minded, Harold leaves a phone message for Queenie, imploring her to hang on until he can get there. Harold is earnest and almost painfully endearing; his journey can’t possibly save a life—or can it?

Last Man in Tower

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By Aravind Adiga – Knopf, 2011 

Winner of the 2008 Man Booker prize for White Tiger, Aravind Adiga delivers a novel that transcends borders of geography and culture. New money is being infused into Mumbai and the city is changing quickly. The respectable high-rise where retired teacher Masterji has raised his family is slated for demolition to make way for an exclusive apartment building. Masterji is mourning the recent death of his wife, adjusting to retirement, trying to remain vital and age with dignity. A charming, corrupt, real estate mogul offers an exorbitant settlement to expedite the sale of the apartments, but Masterji is staying put, the lone dissenter. Loyalties are questioned as Masterji’s friends and family reject his decision to stay in his apartment, yet he does not succumb to psychological terror. India may seem exotic, its customs and religions unfamiliar to some readers, but when money and power threaten to corrupt a community, we see that we may not be so different after all.

State of Wonder

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By Ann Patchett – Harper, 2011

A medical mystery set in an exotic locale, intriguing characters, family drama, life and death—it’s all here in this ambitious novel. Scientist Marina Singh is dispatched to the rain forest by her Midwestern pharmaceutical company to investigate the mysterious death of a coworker. The deceased had been documenting the research of a 70-something rogue doctor who claimed that the native women of the forest could bear children throughout their full lives. Though impeded by insects, cannibals and sickness, Marina is determined to get to the bottom of the story. Your skin will crawl and your heart race as the story unfolds, and in the end of this intense and intriguing work of fiction, you may wonder, should what happens in the jungle, stay in the jungle?

Olive Kitteridge

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By Elizabeth Strout – Random House, 2008 

Are you bored with the glut of female protagonists, divorced, barely out of their 20s, helpless and relying on serendipity to get by? Meet Olive Kitteridge, a heroine like no other. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel told in 13 short stories, you may identify with Olive as she becomes older, unapologetic and real. She complains and she judges, all the while observing others critically as they take on life’s challenges. Hidden beneath a crust of personal shortcomings, Olive emerges as a friend in times of need, a loving but flawed mother, and a woman who grows to accept life on life’s terms. You’ll find yourself rooting for this antihero, who is aware of her own aging and mortality, always surprising with her underlying compassion. Here’s to the Olive Kitteridge in all of us.

Intelligence: A Novel of the CIA

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By Susan Hasler – St. Martin’s Press, 2010 

Who doesn’t enjoy a good spy story? Susan Hasler is a veteran of the counter-intelligence system and captures with chilling realism a terrorist plot as it unfolds at the local ballpark. The daily politics of working for the government are spelled out as only an insider might know them. We meet the team that tries to save the day—and their jobs—while walking the political line. An affair between two 60-somethings is discovered by this group and the angst of the colleagues-turned-lovers is portrayed refreshingly, with both tenderness and realism. The book is a nice change from others in this genre usually written from the male point of view. Read Intelligence for the edge-of-your-seat thrills and applaud Hasler for making her midlife characters dignified and authentic.

Turn of Mind

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By Alice LaPlante – Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011 

Did she or didn’t she? This story of a 64-year-old woman with dementia is a page turner, so deftly written that you are drawn in from the start. Jennifer White is a retired surgeon suspected of killing her best friend, with whom she had a lifelong love-hate relationship. When we meet Jennifer, she is living at home with a full-time caregiver, and her memory is deteriorating quickly. While all clues point to Jennifer as the killer, the complex personalities of her son and daughter make the verdict anything but a slam dunk. Despite the fact that the fingers of the victim were severed with Jennifer’s scalpel—and Jennifer was seen leaving her friend’s home on the day of the murder—reasonable doubt remains. LaPlante allows us to slip into the abyss of dementia with Jennifer, who can no longer say with any certainty if she is, in fact, innocent. Achingly realistic, tragic and haunting, this book will stay with you for a very long time.

Our Souls at Night

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By Kent Haruf – Knopf, 2015

If you are one of the lucky ones who has read award-winning author Kent Haruf (Plainsong, Eventide, Benediction), you’re familiar with his gift for making the simple profoundly rich. As with his other novels, this one takes place in the small town of Holt, CO. Addie Moore, a widow, and widower Louis Waters, both live alone; they know one another by sight, but not well. It is surprising, then, when Addie knocks on Louis’s door and suggests that, nighttime being so hard to bear alone, they simply sleep together. Sweetly awkward at first, their companionship blooms and they wrestle with and sort out their futures, not without disparaging neighbors and family interference. It’s tender, it’s funny. It’s one of those small novels that lives big in your heart and stays with you. A grand finale, indeed, for Haruf passed away before this gem was published.

Florence Gordon

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By Brian Morton – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Florence Gordon is an aging feminist and academic, an intolerant woman who wants to be left alone to write a memoir she thinks no one will read. Arriving at a restaurant to find a surprise 75th birthday party (her own), she leaves; she’d rather write. Yet solitude eludes her as her daughter-in-law and granddaughter arrive in town, and Florence is sucked into the drama that is her son’s fragile marriage. Her disdain for her son’s wife is met with adoration, although her granddaughter, distant but curious, can’t quite figure her grandmother out. And now, unimaginably, book reviews dub her a national treasure, and she is jettisoned into book tours and speaking engagements. She deals with a health crisis, her ex-husband’s envy of her success, a hip young editor, and her granddaughter as her assistant. Acerbic enough to make you wince, while witty and whip smart, Florence Gordon is a woman you will love, hate and remember.

Moving Day: A Thriller

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By Jonathan Stone – Thomas and Mercer, 2014

It’s a brilliant scam: uniformed thieves show up with a van, ahead of schedule, and pack up the house. When the actual movers arrive the next day, all possessions are long gone. But this time, the crooks messed with the wrong man. Stanley Peke is a 72-year-old Holocaust survivor who as a child was forced to find his way alone in the woods when the Nazis left him orphaned and homeless. Peke has successfully buried his past: he works hard, lives well and invests wisely. Incensed and refusing to be victimized again, Peke channels that resilient boy to cross the country, humiliate the thief and reclaim a lifetime’s worth of possessions. Moving Day is a psychological thriller with intelligent characters in a harrowing plot that shows just how far a man will go to keep his treasures and his pride.

The Sense of an Ending

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By Julian Barnes – Knopf, 2011 

Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, this profound novel is about a man forced to look back at an uncomfortable time in his life and ask himself if he is who he thinks he is. Tony Webster, now in his 60s, considers his life settled. He has a good relationship with his family; he is comfortable and at peace. He is quite surprised to find that a woman he once met only briefly—the mother of an old lover from school—has bequeathed him some money and a diary. Along with this gift reemerges the former lover with her version of that time in their lives. Her account makes Tony question the veracity not only of his memories but his self-image. What other memories has he finessed to the point of distortion? This tale is a provocative, psychological mystery—one might be tempted to read its 160 pages in one sitting. Don’t rush. Barnes has chosen each word thoughtfully for us to savor, and then to read again.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

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By Jonas Jonasson – Hyperion, 2012

Impetuous Allan Karlsson dodges his centennial birthday celebration by escaping out the window of his nursing home. Walking in slippers to the nearby bus depot, he picks up a suitcase that a stranger asked him to watch and heads off to begin another chapter in a life already filled with adventures, both good and bad. Hilarity ensues when Allan discovers the suitcase contains a large, ill-gotten fortune and the victim needs to get it back. Allan’s resourcefulness comes from a long life that afforded him the opportunity to see many world events unfold, recalled with Allan himself in the thick of them, not unlike Forrest Gump. His experiences include building a nuclear bomb, fighting in the Spanish-American War and preventing the assassination of Winston Churchill. This is a happy-go-lucky tale with zany characters (Einstein’s brother!), improbable circumstances (an elephant!) and the most outrageous centenarian you’ll likely meet.

Rage Against the Dying

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By Becky Masterman – Minotaur, 2013

Retired agent returns to action to seek the one that got away. Don’t be turned off by the familiar theme of this fast-paced thriller—there is plenty of originality and suspense to make it worthwhile. For starters, at 59, tiny, white-haired, former FBI agent Brigid Quinn defies ageist stereotyping, and her chutzpah alone makes this an entertaining read. When Quinn thinks evidence from a string of murders isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, she goes rogue to find the killer of her one-time protégé. As she also struggles to honor her commitment to her new husband and the life they’ve created, demons from her glory days keep interfering. Suspects abound, but Quinn’s obsession could cost her her marriage—or her life. You may find yourself hoping Quinn stays out of retirement for plenty of sequels. (Silver Century readers may be intrigued to know that the author met with a harsh rejection at first: an agent told her that “Nobody is interested in a woman older than 30.”)