🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A collection of twelve short stories, each a perfect encapsulation of literary characters stood up living and breathing, with seemingly effortless grace, and the space of a mere few pages. In each case, young and old, and brimming with dry humor, the reader is invited in to share lives…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 What makes a ‘good’ day for a dysfunctional family? A family made so, in large part, due to unresolved trauma, seeping over time into life-altering mental illness. Betty and Greg Laramie made absolutely terrible parents, eventually forcing them to give up their daughter, Charlie, to foster care. With Betty…
Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick — aka “Mad Mabel” — is eighty-one years old. A tough-talking (tender-hearted?) and deeply humorous octogenarian, six-feet tall with broad shoulders, Mabel puts up with nothing from any-one, least of all the mousy neighborhood child Persephone, or her much-lamented nemesis, the ninety-three year old Ishaan and his…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Absorbing and masterful psychological suspense, this top-notch thriller is intermingled with thoughtful social commentary on aging, grief, loneliness, and mental clarity — and how hard it is really separate those concepts. Linda Davidson, our first person POV narrator, is seventy-six years old, recently widowed, and living in the retirement…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Absolutely not your typical memoir — but then again, Sue Aikens is not your typical human. The narrative covers Sue’s tragic beginnings as a young girl, abused and unloved; to her mentors, loves, and children as her family life evolves; all the way to her eventual settlement on her…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Breezy and candid, intimate and expansive, this memoir, by non-fiction writer Susan Orlean, refuses to be typecast. The author, an expert in the art of a quirky sort of storytelling, featuring uniquely interesting real-life characters, places or topics, each of which is are not quite what you’re expecting, will…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Gordon Slee is a bit of a loser. Or, at least, he thinks he is. Bullied and taken advantage of by his cretin of a boss, Edward Creaton, and terminally disappointing to his awful parents, Gordon is forty-two years old and has never managed to live up to his…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Six charming stories featuring my new favorite literary unsung hero, Ferdinand Fox (sure to be a favorite of your early reader too). Between these pages, Ferdinand is a busy fox — as he roams the countryside, he rescues a trapped boy, helps a box of kittens find a new…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A comprehensive, compassionate look at the specific challenges and approaches targeted to assist patients with early-onset cancer (diagnosed in one who is eighteen to forty-nine years old). As unbelievably challenging as a cancer diagnosis at any age is, the author, a clinical psychologist who has focused her practice exclusively…
🌟🌟🌟💫 A cozy mystery set in the rural Scottish Highlands, centering on the new owner of a bookstore, and her “Armchair Detectives” crime book club. Beth Cunningham is a thirty-four year old woman, newly released from the care of her ailing mother by the trauma of her death. Now the…