When a hot air balloon ride ends with a sea landing and an unexpected rescue from a North Korean ship, one hundred-year-old Allan Karlsson and his sidekick Julius find themselves in the middle of a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions.

Ruthie Midona has worked the front desk of Providence Retirement Villa for years, living on-site at the beck and call of the wealthy residents-- and the rare tortoises that roam the lawn. Teddy Prescott, son of Providence's new owner, is in town saving up money to pursue his dream of opening a tattoo shop. He's the definition of risky, and Ruthie's dazzled-- until he mistakes her for an old lady! She has revenge in mind: her most eccentric residents,...

At the age of 90-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everythingincluding her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two long-suffering carers, Nastya and Euphoria, with tangled stories of her husbands and love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without the aid of a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible...

"A spare ... [and] bittersweet ... story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future"-- In Holt, Colorado, widower Louis Waters is initially thrown when the widowed Addie Moore suggests that they spend time together, in bed, to stave off loneliness. They are soon exchanging the confidences and memories of lives now empty of family, and their hopes for the...

Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn't belong. Not with his mother's new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father's wife. Not at school, where he's an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he's tamed and to a blind, 92-year-old woman in his building who's introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez? Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly escaped...