Spotlight On

Stan Hinden

Award-winning Washington Post retirement columnist Stan Hinden’s bestseller helps you make the right decisions to ensure a happy, healthful retirement. It delivers all the expert advice you need in an easy-to-understand step-by-step style. The 4th edition includes

• Up-to-date material on health insurance and the prescription drug plan
• The facts about Medicare Part A (hospital), Part B (tests, doctors, preventive care), and Part D (prescription drugs)
• The author’s personal experiences with the realities of long-term Alzheimer’s care
• Fully updated material on Social Security strategies
• How to handle the financial realities of the post-meltdown economy
• New resources you can turn to for extra advice

S.C. Francis

Inside this jam-packed book you’ll find hundreds of ideas to spark your imagination for planning an exciting, active, happy, healthy, and mentally sharp life after work. Here’s just a fraction of what you’ll discover:

• The simple secret to finding purpose and meaning in retirement
• How to focus on what truly makes you happy and fulfilled to guide your decisions on what to do with your time
• Travel and adventure: Ignite your wanderlust with an abundance of travel inspiration!
• Outdoor activities: Find healthy and active outdoor inspiration.
• Health and wellness: Discover fantastic ideas for staying physically and mentally fit.
• Social opportunities: Ways to make new friends and stay socially active during your golden years.
• Useful technology: Harness the potential of tech tools and online connectivity to thrive in retirement.
• Go in-depth: Dive into standout topics such as cruising, motorhome travel, photography, and more.

Whether you’re looking for tips on travel, hobbies, or social activities, you’ll find a wealth of practical advice and inspiring ideas for every interest and mobility level.

Ernie J. Zelinski

How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free offers inspirational advice on how to enjoy life to its fullest. The key to achieving an active and satisfying retirement involves a great deal more than having adequate financial resources; it also encompasses all other aspects of life – interesting leisure activities, creative pursuits, physical well-being, mental well-being, and solid social support.

With its friendly format and positive tone, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free offers retirement wisdom that you won’t get from your financial advisor. This wisdom will prove to be much more important for creating an active, satisfying, and happy retirement than how much money you have saved.

Jeanne Dams

After retiring from a career in both teaching and copywriting, Jeanne Dams started writing mystery novels set in England. Her first main character is Dorothy Martin, recently widowed, in her sixties. Her scholarly husband, Fred, had planned to relocate them to England and she proceeded on her own after his death. The first Dorothy Martin mystery, The Body in the Transept (December 1995) won The Agatha for best first novel. Dorothy is a fan of big hats.

Fredrik Backman

The widower Ove is a very cranky man who is disagreeable to anyone and everyone he meets. When a lively young family moves in next door, an association that begins with a run-over mailbox –might just end with everyone’s life being changed forever. Millions have loved this charming novel by Swedish author Backman.

Paulette Jiles

A post-Civil War novel set in Texas in the late 1870’s. Retired Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is an older widower who has fought in two wars and now travels around north Texas reading the news to the hordes of illiterate settlers. The itinerant life suits him fine. He charges ten cents a person for admission and makes a living along with his pension. Captain Kidd sets out on a 400-mile journey from Wichita Falls, Texas to San Antonio to deliver a young orphan to her uncle. Kiowa raiders have killed her parents, and the girl is being raised Kiowa. The US Army pays Kidd a fifty-dollar gold piece for the job and they set off. A road story with an old military man and a little girl who speaks no English but is pretty tough. After a rough start the two survivors begin to trust each other and travel the treacherous land together. Beautiful story.

Richard Osman

Richard Osman published the first novel in this series, The Thursday Murder Club, in September of 2020. There are now 4 novels. People magazine said, “an amusing debut that finds gold in getting older.” Four 70-ish residents of a retirement village called Cooper’s Chase, located in southern England, are amateur detectives. The four friends meet every Thursday to help the police solve cold cases. You guessed it! One case becomes the real thing and the four lovable, quirky elders are, it turns out, very good at their detective work.

Kathleen Rooney

Lillian Boxfish is 85 years old. Lillian has been a career woman, a married woman, a mother, a divorced woman and a woman who has experienced emotional exhaustion. Lillian experienced The Jazz Age and The AIDS Epidemic. Lillian decides to take a 10-mile walk in her beloved city on New Years Eve, 1984. “She encounters a variety of people, including bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be.” Along the way she gives a lot of her stuff away, including her mink coat. (I was walking in Manhattan New Years Eve, one year later–a 30 year old about to have a baby, I walked from Gramercy Park to Mulberry St.)

Veera Hiranandani

Local author Veera Hiranandani is back with a brand new picture book that’ll melt your heart. A perfect book to share with a grandparent, as it celebrates how the ordinary, everyday skills and whims of Grandpa make him “the greatest” through a child’s eyes.

Nina LaCour

Celebrated children’s author Nina LaCour writes delightful books for all ages, and this Young Reader book is no different. It fills an important space in this age group, in which it is challenging to find diverse family representations. LaCour crafts a tender story about community and what it means to be a good neighbor. An excellent feel-good read for bedtime.

Beth Lincoln

I was in complete agreement with my fifth-seventh grade book club in my love for “The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels” (this book’s predecessor). A wonderful fit for fans of “The Mysterious Benedict Society” or “The Westing Game,” this series is as fun and fast-paced as it is suspenseful and intriguing. A real page-turner, and I’m sure this sequel is no different. (For parents: one thing worth noting is that there’s a fair bit more murder and gristle in the original than you may be used to reading in middle grade mysteries.)

Carrie Mac

Who doesn’t love a good zombie story? This one centers around two twins and their gold medal-winning Special Olympics champion trainer as they work on increasing their speed to stay safe during a zombie apocalypse. Early reviewers call this one “suspenseful” and “relatable,” and say they were particularly drawn to Mac’s unique cast of characters.

Malla Nunn

This historical fiction novel is only new-to-us here in Hastings, as it was published in 2019. This YA novel is set at a boarding school in Swaziland in the 1960s addresses themes of colorism, classism, bullying, and hope. The prose is excellent and the setting comes alive. Adults may enjoy this one as well, and its conversation-starting themes make it an excellent choice for a one-on-one parent-child “book club.”