Sometimes what we appear to have lost is simply something it was time to leave behind. Perhaps our system just lets something go, our having moved through the experience and now needing it no more. A friend of mine was sitting once with two of his best friends, a couple he'd partied long and hard with during the 1960s. At about ten in the evening, the couple's twenty something daughter came home, saw them on the couch, and admonished them, "You guys...

The death of sculptor Adam Berendt finds his survivors--mostly middle-aged folks living in an upscale community on the Hudson--grieving and unexpectedly influenced by their charismatic friend's untimely demise.

A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and shes developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve lifes easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her shes moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her...

Thousands of readers have found an exciting new vision for the second half of life in the bestselling book, Halftime. Bob Buford showed us that we aren't experiencing a midlife crisis that's winding us down to our retirement years, but a break in the game that can prepare us for the most exciting half of life. In Game Plan, Buford gives you a practical way to move from success to significance and create an individual strategy that can get you where...

"Mary Miller seizes the mantle of southern literature with this wry tale of middle age and the unexpected turns a life can take. Like her predecessors Ann Beattie and Raymond Carver, Mary Miller brings an essential voice to her generation. Building on her critically acclaimed novel, The Last Days of California, and her biting collection, Always Happy Hour, Miller slyly transports readers to her unapologetic corner of the South--this time, Biloxi,...

Identifies patterns of age-related change and compares the developmental rhythms of men and women, deepening understanding of the stresses experienced by couples during the various stages of adult life.

As soon as Anne Shirley arrived at the snug, white farmhouse called Green Gables, she knew she wanted to stay forever. But would the Cuthberts send her back to the orphanage? Anne knows she's not what they expected -- a skinny girl with decidedly red hair and a temper to match. If only she could convince them to let her stay, she'd try very hard not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes or blurt out the very first thing she had to say. Anne was...

"please file under Pregnancy: Today, 1 in 5 women in the United States has her first child after age 35; when a woman becomes pregnant in her late thirties or forties, she naturally has different needs than younger mothers-to-be. Now, after more than ten years, Your Pregnancy After 35 has been fully revised with the most up-to-date information, addressing every health and lifestyle concern pertinent to "older" mothers. From how age affects pregnancy...

After more than a dozen moves in twenty-five years of marriage, Joanna Harrison is lonely and tired of being a corporate wife. Her children are grown and gone, her husband is more married to his job than to her, and now they're about to pack up once more. Panicked at the thought of having to start all over again, Joanna commits the first irresponsible act of her life. She runs away to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, a place she's been to just once.She...

"Jimmy Rabbitte of The Commitments returns in the triumphant new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author The distinct wit and lively, authentic dialogue that are the hallmarks of Roddy Doyle's fiction are on a full display as he reintroduces Jimmy Rabbitte in this follow-up to his beloved debut novel The Commitments. In the 1980s Jimmy Rabbitte formed the Commitments, a ragtag, blue-collar collective of Irish youths determined to bring the soul...