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THERE BUT FOR GRACE

There but for Grace, a novel described by Margot Livesey as “a lovely, witty deeply absorbing novel,” chronicles one woman’s mission to challenge the stereotypes about “older” women. She does so with grace, wit, and a no-holds-barred feistiness that will engage readers of all ages. Fifty-three-year-old Grace Winthrop Hobbes is newly divorced with two college-age kids, an eccentric octogenarian mother, a stalled novel-in-progress, and a sex drive that is coming out of hibernation with a vengeance. Refusing to go gently into the dark night of abstinence and retreat, and tired of sexual double standards, Grace makes a vow to seize life’s bull by the horns.

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TIME IN A BOTTLE

One of our recommended books is Time in a Bottle by Marjorie Klein

Could the Fountain of Youth be real?

Lorelei, a 60-year-old virgin, owns a Miami lingerie shop, eats organic food, and minds her own business. She never considers alternatives to this life until the day her well runs dry, when Juan the well-digger plunges its depths and taps into the flow of hidden water from an underground spring. She attributes her awakening sensuality and increasingly youthful appearance to her healthy lifestyle. Her business partner, Sharleen, suspects that the water has more to do with Lorelei’s changes than the ingestion of kale and quinoa and embarks on a campaign to sell it from the shop.

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A MAN CALLED OVE

One of our recommended books is A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.”

But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats,

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UNQUIET

unquiet

Praised across Scandinavia as a “literary masterpiece,” “spellbinding,” and “magnificent,” Unquiet reflects on six taped conversations the author had with her father at the very end of his life.

He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, the youngest of nine children. Every summer, since she was a little girl, she visits him at his beloved stony house surrounded by woods, poppies, and the Baltic sea. Now that she’s grown up and he’s in his late eighties, he envisions a book about old age. He worries that he’s losing his language,

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HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE YOU MAKE

happiness is a choice

An extraordinary look at what it means to grow old and a heartening guide to well-being, Happiness Is a Choice You Make weaves together the stories and wisdom of six New Yorkers who number among the “oldest old”—those eighty-five and up.

In 2015, when the award-winning journalist John Leland set out on behalf of The New York Times to meet members of America’s fastest-growing age group, he anticipated learning of challenges, of loneliness, and of the deterioration of body, mind, and quality of life. But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction.

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THE RED ADDRESS BOOK

One of our recommended books is The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg

Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny—her American grandniece, and her only relative—give her great joy and remind her of her own youth.

When Doris was a girl, she was given an address book by her father, and ever since she has carefully documented everyone she met and loved throughout the years. Looking through the little book now, Doris sees the many crossed-out names of people long gone and is struck by the urge to put pen to paper. In writing down the stories of her colorful past—working as a maid in Sweden,

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