May Adult Reading Challenge
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Trejo
On screen, Danny Trejo is the most recognisable anti-hero in Hollywood, killed at least a hundred times, he steals every scene he's in. The ultimate hard-knock-lifer and a true man of the world, he has all the stories, and all the scars. Raised in an abusive home, Danny struggled from an early age with heroin addiction and doing time in some of the country's most notorious state prison, including Folsom and San Quentin. In raw detail, Danny recounts how he managed the horrors of incarceration, rebuilt his life, and drew inspiration from the adrenaline-fueled robbing heists of his past for the film roles that forged his legend. Redemptive, poignant, and raw, Trejo is a portrait of a magnificent life and an unforgettable journey through tragedy, pain and finally, success.
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Just As I Am
"Just as I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and a mother, a sister and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by his hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say." -Cicely Tyson
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Fellowship Point
Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly Wister. She has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, a philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She strives to create beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?
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The Coroner's Lunch
Laos, 1978: Dr. Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old medical doctor, has unwillingly been appointed the national coroner of the new socialist Laos. His lab is underfunded, his boss is incompetent, and his support staff is quirky, to say the least. But Siri’s sense of humor gets him through his often frustrating days. When the body of the wife of a prominent politician comes through his morgue, Siri has reason to suspect the woman has been murdered. To get to the truth, Siri and his team face government secrets, spying neighbors, victim hauntings, Hmong shamans, botched romances, and other deadly dangers. Somehow, Siri must figure out a way to balance the will of the party and the will of the dead.
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This Chair Rocks
Explaining the roots of ageism in history and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines with wit and research how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function. This book also looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action. It’s time to create a world of age equality by making discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!
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The Woman Next Door
Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors. One is black, the other white. Both are successful career women, recently widowed, who are living with questions, disappointments, and secrets that have brought them shame. And each has something that the woman next door deeply desires. Sworn enemies, the two share a hedge and a deliberate hostility, which they maintain with a zeal that belies their age. But, one day, an unexpected event forces Hortensia and Marion together. As the physical barriers between them collapse, their bickering gradually softens into conversation and, gradually, the two discover common ground. But are these sparks of connection enough to ignite a friendship, or is it too late to expect these women to change?
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Hannah Coulter
Hannah, the now–elderly narrator, recounts the love she has for the land and for her community. She remembers each of her two husbands, and all places and community connections threatened by twentieth–century technologies. At risk is the whole culture of family farming, hope redeemed when her wayward and once lost grandson, Virgil, returns to his rural home place to work the farm.
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The Kingdom of Sand
The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents during the height of the AIDS epidemic and has found himself unable to leave after their deaths. At the heart of the novel is the story of his friendship with Earl, whom he met cruising at the local boat ramp. For the last twenty years, he has been visiting Earl to watch classic films together and critique the neighbors. Earl is the only person in town with whom he can truly be himself. Now Earl’s health is failing, and our increasingly misanthropic narrator must contend with the fact that once Earl dies, he will be completely alone. He distracts himself with sexual encounters at the video porn store and visits to Walgreens. All the while, he shares reflections on illness and death that are at once funny and heartbreaking. -
The Secrets Between Us
Poor and illiterate, Bhima had faithfully worked for the Dubash family, an upper-middle-class Parsi household, for more than twenty years. Yet after courageously speaking the truth about a heinous crime perpetrated against her own family, the devoted servant was cruelly fired. The sting of that dismissal was made more painful coming from Sera Dubash, the temperamental employer who had long been Bhima’s only confidante. Bhima’s fortunes take an unexpected turn when her path intersects with Parvati, a bitter, taciturn older woman. The two acquaintances soon form a tentative business partnership, selling fruits and vegetables at the local market. As they work together, these two women seemingly bound by fate grow closer, each confessing the truth about their lives and the wounds that haunt them. Discovering her first true friend, Bhima pieces together a new life, and together, the two women learn to stand on their own.
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Crazy Brave
In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice.
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Nomadland
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads. Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.
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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Lillian Boxfish took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, “in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.” Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now—her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl—but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed—and has not.
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The Old Woman with the Knife
At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age--that she'll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin. Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses--for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she's known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw's world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.
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The Thursday Murder Club
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?
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Old Man's War
John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.
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The Atlas Maneuver
1945. In the waning months of World War II, Japan hid vast quantities of gold and other stolen valuables in boobytrapped underground caches all across the Philippines. By 1947 some of that loot was recovered by the United States government. Those assets were stamped classified, shipped to Europe, and secretly assimilated into something called the Black Eagle Trust. Present day. Retired Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is in Switzerland doing a favor for a friend when he is thrust into a war between the world's oldest bank and the CIA involving the Black Eagle Trust. He quickly discovers that cryptocurrency is being readied for an assault on the world's financial systems. Cotton Malone is stymied at every turn. Then he finally comes face-to-face with the Atlas Maneuver.
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Resurrection Walk
After defense attorney Mickey Haller gets a wrongfully convicted man out of prison, he is inundated with pleas from incarcerated people claiming innocence. He enlists his half brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, to weed through the letters, knowing most claims will be false. Bosch pulls a needle from the haystack: a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff's deputy, but who still maintains her innocence. Bosch reviews the case and sees elements that don't add up, and a sheriff's department intent on bringing quick justice in the killing of one of its own. Now Haller has an uphill battle in court. Those who don't want the case reopened will stop at nothing to keep the Haller-Bosch dream team from finding the truth.
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Hero
Justine Poole provides security for wealthy and high-profile Hollywood stars. When she prevents a brazen robbery at the Beverly Hills home of two of her clients, she is initially lauded in the media as a local hero. But the spotlight soon puts her in the crosshairs of the crime kingpin behind the burglaries. Unable to stand the embarrassment of his lackeys having been defeated by a lone woman, Mr. Conger puts in a call to the one man who can make his problems disappear. Leo Sealy will kill anyone for a price. All he needs is a name and a face. Luckily for him, the local news is as eager as he is for any information about the heroic bodyguard--and quick to broadcast their findings, regardless of what it might mean for her safety. But Sealy isn't prepared for just how quick and resourceful Justine can be.
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The #1 Lawyer
Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. That's when Penney makes a bold decision. He stops trading on his power-lawyer identity and creates a new one: lawyer lifeguard. Moonlighting at the beach, showing up to court in flip-flops, mentoring a law student, the new Penney is at first unrecognizable. It's said that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. But when Penney is accused of murder, the #1 Lawyer will find a way to triumph.
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Happy Place
Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college. Except for reasons they’re still not discussing, they broke up five months ago without telling their best friends. They find themselves sharing a bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. And the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week?
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Missing Persons
A wealthy businessman approaches Jack Morgan, head of Private - the world's largest investigation agency - with a desperate plea to track down his daughter and two grandchildren, who have disappeared without a trace. What at first seems to be a simple missing persons case soon escalates into something much more deadly, when Jack discovers the daughter is being pursued by highly trained operatives. As Jack uncovers more of the woman's backstory, the trail leads towards Afghanistan - where Jack's career as a US Marine ended in catastrophe. Jack will need to face the trauma of his past to save a family's future.
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Fourth Wing
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail has been ordered by the commanding general, her tough-as-talons mother, to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans, they incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most other students would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. Then Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
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Crosshairs
A killer uses fearsome precision to take out impossible targets. Detective Michael Bennett teams with a shooting expert--a former Army Ranger and sniper with NYPD's Emergency Services Unit. But Officer Rob Trilling seems more comfortable with rifles than he is with people. When his new partner begins to log unexplained absences from duty, only Bennett can prove whether the decorated officer is a lonely hunter or a hardened assassin.
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The Lincoln Highway
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.
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Reminders of Him
After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But everyone in her daughter's life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself. The only person who hasn't closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna's daughter. The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.
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Mad Honey
Olivia McAfee never imagined that she and her son Asher would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. When Lily Campanello and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But as the case against Asher unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.
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Random in Death
Jenna’s parents had finally given in, and there she was, at a New York club with her best friends, watching the legendary band Avenue A, carrying her demo in hopes of slipping it to the guitarist, Jake Kincade. Minutes later, Jake’s in the alley getting some fresh air, and Jenna comes stumbling out, sick and confused and deathly pale. He doesn’t know that someone in the crowd has jabbed her with a needle. When his girlfriend Nadine arrives, she calls her friend, Lieutenant Eve Dallas. Lab results show a toxic mix of substances in the victim’s body. There are no obvious clues why this levelheaded sixteen-year-old, passionate about her music, would be targeted. If Jenna was just the random, unlucky victim of a madman consumed by hatred, there are likely more deaths to come.
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The Hunter
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.
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The Women
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
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I Will Find You
David Burroughs woke suddenly to discover his three-year-old son Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. Half a decade later, David's been wrongly convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security prison. Then his sister-in-law, Rachel, visits the prison bearing a strange photograph. In the background of the photo of a bustling amusement park, just barely in frame, is a boy bearing an eerie resemblance to David's son. David just knows: Matthew is still alive. He plans a harrowing escape, determined to save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened.