National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution is about a couple experiencing a mid-life crisis. The husband loses his job as editor of a financial magazine. Neither are happy with their aging bodies. He seems to have gotten by with charm and frozen emotions. The wife has no idea how angry she is with him for his detachment. It is her idea to sell the house and just travel. But he is not coping well with retirement, so he simply walks off a ferry in Australia and leaves her.

"Stupendous...' novel that seems to have been created in real time, reflecting with perfect comedy and horrible tragedy exactly what America feels like right this minute."'Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story returns with a biting, brilliant, emotionally resonant novel very much of our times. Narcissistic, hilariously self-deluded, and divorced from the real world as most of us know it, hedge-fund manager Barry Cohen oversees $2.4 billion in assets.

Everything should stay as it is, or you will lose everything, and that's how it is for everyone. Today was a day for getting along, liver-healing, a cocktail party and a faster wireless connection that tolerates renovated turn-of-the-century walls and allows Candy Cane (or Coconut?) to become a part of your afternoon en suite bathroom caucus. Life is not good, but it feels good, on occasion, baby, is what you might type.

The Love Monster is the tall tale of one woman’s struggle with mid-life issues. The main character, Margaret H. Atwood, has psoriasis, a boring job and a bad attitude. Her cheating husband has left her. And none of her pants fit any more. Marston takes the reader on a hilarious journey of recovery. Hope comes in the form of a dope-smoking senior citizen, a religious fanatic, a good lawyer and a talking turtle (not to mention Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Warren Zevon, Neil Armstrong and a yogi buried deep underground).

Fortysomething sportswriter Jack Brannon is bored to tears with the men's tour. So he decides to check out Ginger Clayton, the hot, new franchise babe on the ladies' links. Things get interesting in a hurry, as it becomes clear somebody wants the gorgeous superstar disqualified for good.

After discovering that her husband has lost all of their money and left her broke, Bonnie Duke Cullman is abandoning her comfortable life in Atlanta to teach at a community college in rural Alabama. Ruth Elkin just lost her sewing job at the Cherished Lady factory, and now she must attend college classes to get back on track. The two women's lives become intertwined, and together they survive the ups and downs of small town life.

In his novel Indian Summer, William Dean Howells presents a mellow but realistic story that has the complete feel of that delightful time of the year, although the plot actually spans several seasons. The Indian summer aspect applies to a sophisticated gentleman, Theodore Colville, who has just entered his middle years as he returns to a scene, Florence, Italy, that played an important part in his early manhood. It was here twenty years earlier that he first fell in love, seemingly successfully until a sudden and harsh rejection.