Step into the charming world of "Cranford" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. This delightful novel invites you to a quaint English village, where the lives of its eccentric and endearing inhabitants are interwoven in a tapestry of humor, heartwarming moments, and social observations. Set in the early 19th century, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary Smith, an outsider welcomed into the close-knit community. As she navigates the idiosyncrasies...

"Written with love, told with joy. Very easy to enjoy."--Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove For fans of The Little Paris Bookshop and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared comes a heartwarming debut about 96-year-old Doris, who writes down the memories of her eventful life as she pages through her decades-old address book. But the most profound moment of her life is still to come . . . Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman...

The national bestseller and Today Show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect . . . When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both...

"Everybody has something to hide At 75-years-old, Ethel Fiona Crestwater is used to being underestimated. She looks like someone's grandma, though she's never married or had children; petite and a bit frail, she's not a threat to anyone. Or is she...? Ethel runs a boarding house for government agents, and when someone murders one of her boarders, she springs into action-much to the surprise of her distant cousin Jesse, who has recently come to stay...

"Meet Florence Gordon: blunt, brilliant, cantankerous and passionate, feminist icon to young women, invisible and underappreciated by most everyone else. At seventy-five, Florence has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his wife and daughter, and they embroil Florence in their...

"Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red blooded original. When she's not onstage, we look forward to her return..."* And now, indeed, Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever. "It turns out--I just wasn't done with Olive," said Strout. "It was like she kept poking me in the ribs, so I finally said 'Okay, okay...'" Now Olive returns, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade...

When Iola Anne Poole, an old-timer on Hatteras Island, passes away in her bed at ninety-one, the struggling young mother in her rental cottage, Tandi Jo Reese, finds eighty-one carefully decorated prayer boxes, one for each year, spanning from Iola's youth to her last days. Hidden in the boxes is the story of a lifetime, written on random bits of paper.

Now that the dullish Henry Pulling has left his job with an agreeable pension and a firm handshake, he plans to spend more time weeding his dahlias. Then, for the first time in fifty years, he sees his aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral. Charging into her seventies with florid abandon, not a day of her life wasted, and her future as bright as her brilliant red hair, Augusta insists that Henry abandon his garden, follow her, and hold on tight. With...

"A comedic novel about an American woman leaving her 20-year marriage to her French husband, returning to her native San Francisco to pick up the life she left behind, and the entwining lives of her children and grandchildren"--

"'I live here alone in a garage, together with a laptop computer and an old hand grenade. It's pretty cozy.' Herra Bjornsson is at the beginning of the end of her life. Oh, she has two weeks left, maybe three--she has booked her cremation appointment, at a crispy 1,000 degrees, so it won't be long. But until then she has her cigarettes, a World War II-era weapon, some Facebook friends, and her memories to sustain her. And what a life this remarkable...