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"Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It s a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers....
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Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when 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 unexpected friendship.
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Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.
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In Washington State, a widowed doctor suffering from cancer takes a hunting trip, the real purpose of which is to commit suicide, which he will masquerade as an accident. But Dr. Ben Givens' resolve is tested by several events which reaffirm the joy of living--he cheats death by fighting off wolves and helps a girl give birth.
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My name is Gus Bailey...It should be pointed out that it is a regular feature of my life that people whisper things in my ear, very private things, about themselves or others. I have always understood the art of listening. The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. His propensity for gossip has finally gotten him into trouble--$11 million worth. His problems begin when he falls hook, line, and sinker...
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Julian Treslove, professionally unspectacular BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, popular Jewish philosopher, writer, and TV personality, are old school friends. They've never quite lost touch with each other or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and all three dine together at Libor's grand, central London apartment for a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence. That very evening, as Treslove walks home, he is...
7) Be mine
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"Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colorful lives--sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent--Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all: caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS. On a shared winter odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank, in typical Bascombe...
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Sage Singer becomes friends with an old man who is particularly beloved in her community after they strike up a conversation at the bakery where she works. Josef Weber is everyone's favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. One day he asks Sage for a favor, to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses, but then he tells her he deserves to die. Once he reveals his secret, Sage wonders if he is right. Can someone who has committed a truly heinous act...
9) Silver alert
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Herb's charmed life with his dear wife, Susan, in their Key West house is coming undone. Susan, in her seventies, now needs constant care, and Herb is in denial about his own ailing health. The one bright spot is the arrival of an endlessly optimistic manicurist calling herself Renee. She sings to Susan during manicures, gets her to paint, and brings her a much-needed sense of contentment. But then Herb and Susan's adult children arrive to stage an...
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In Avenue of Mysteries, Juan Diego--a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico--has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what's coming--specifically, her own future and her brother's. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn't know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your...
11) Nobody's fool
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Sixty-year-old Sully is down on his luck and has to deal with a landlady who wants him evicted, an estranged son who is headed down the same road as Sully, a neurotic ex-wife, unreasonable girlfriend, and the ghost of his own abusive father.
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"After he's forced to sell the family farm he's labored on his whole life, 63-year-old Gerrit Laninga doesn't know what to do with himself. He sacrificed everything for the land--his time, his health, his family--with nothing to show for it but bitterness, regret, and two grown children who want nothing to do with him. Fifteen-year-old Rae Walters has growing doubts and fears about The Plan--the detailed blueprint for high school that will help her...
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Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mum was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself - and his dad. Then, when Charlie is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and his aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in...
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Bob Comet is a retired librarian, isolated but not lonely, living out his quiet days in a mint-colored house in Oregon, surrounded by his books and small comforts. One morning, out on his daily walk, he performs an act of kindness that brings him into contact with a nearby senior center, where he soon begins volunteering. Here, as a community of peers and friends gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from...
15) Never go back
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A group of ex-RAF comrades journey to a Scottish castle for a reunion where fifty years earlier they acted as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. But by the time they reach their destination, two of them are dead. --
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In this alluring, melancholic novel--a writer haunted by his double blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in his attempt to outrun the unknown. Lena is a young actress in Stockholm. Christoph writes her a message. He wants to meet her. He just indicates where and when and that he wants to tell her a story. She must have wondered about such a note. They meet, go for a walk and he tells her that he wrote a book, just the one....