"Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many "incidents." Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing,...

"Germaine Johnson doesn't need friends. She has her work and her Sudoku puzzles. Until, that is, an incident at her insurance company leaves her jobless--and it turns out that there are very few openings these days for senior mathematicians with zero people skills. Soon enough though, Germaine manages to secure a position at City Hall answering calls on the Senior Citizens Helpline. But it turns out that the mayor has something else in mind for Germaine:...

"In the latest novel from a master of European crime fiction, past, present, and future intertwine on a breathtaking journey from Tangier in 1955 to Malmö in 2014. Miguel and Helena meet at a nursing home in Tarifa, at an age when they believe they have lived it all already. Miguel is afraid of flying. Helena is afraid of the ocean. Both have adult children and feel they are no longer needed. The dramatic suicide of one of the other residents opens...

There was an old lady who swallowed a truck. I don't know why she swallowed a truck but it didn't get stuck. You won't believe why the Old Lady swallowed a truck, a tire, a chain, some wood, some metal, some tools, and some screws!

In a collection that is wise, funny, clever and moving, Julian Barnes has created characters whose passions and longings are made all the stronger by the knowledge that, for them, time is almost at an end. From the hairdessing salon where an old man measures out his life in haircuts, to the concert hall where a music lover carries out an obsessive campaign against those who cough in concerts; from the woman who reads elaborate recipes to her sick...

On the highest point of an island, in a house clinging to the edge of a cliff, live Mary Rose and Harold Grapes, a retired couple still mourning the death of their son thirty-five years before. Weighed down by decades of grief and memories, the Grapeses have never moved past the tragedy. Then, on the eve of eviction from the most beautiful and dangerously unstable perch in the area, they're uprooted by a violent storm. The disbelieving Grapeses and...

"In 1970, while on location shoot in Shropshire for the downmarket BBC sitcom Floggit and Leggit, ageing actor Edward Lowe--a "short, stocky northerner with a receding hairline and bad eyesight", who plays the pompous and officious lead, a role based on himself--stumbles across the body of a young woman, apparently the victim of a tragic drowning accident. But there's something about her death that rings the faintest of bells in his head and, convinced...

"End-of-life care--or assisted death? When her elderly patients start dying at home days after minor surgery, anesthesiologist Dr. Kate Downey wants to know why. The surgeon, not so much. Old people die, that's what they do, is his response. When Kate presses, surgeon Charles Ricken places the blame squarely on her shoulders. Kate is currently on probation and the chief of staff sides with the surgeon, leaving Kate to prove her innocence and save...

"In the next highly anticipated installment of Lee Child's acclaimed suspense series, Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an elderly couple...and confronts his most dangerous opponents yet. "This is a random universe," Reacher says. "Once in a blue moon things turn out just right." This isn't one of those times. Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he...