Oldster Bookshelf #5
An occasional series, featuring books submitted by Oldsters and others.
Readers,
Welcome to another edition of The Oldster Bookshelf. Once again, please keep these caveats in mind:
I will likely not have read most of the books I feature in Oldster Bookshelf. I have only one brain, and it is very busy editing Oldster and Memoir Land. I will have read descriptions of the books, which have come to me via the authors and their publicists, or people other than the authors recommending them to me, or via the ether.
I will not be able to feature everyone who emails me at the submissions email, oldsterbookshelf@gmail.com. I will feature only those books that sound like they’ll be of interest to Oldster readers. Please be understanding about this.
Please be patient, as I will only be able to feature a limited number of books per installment, and the series will be occasional. If your book isn’t in this edition, it’s possible it could show up later. But I cannot go back and forth about it over email. I am too busy with everything else I’m publishing. Thank you for understanding.
Scroll to the bottom of this post for instructions on submitting your book for consideration. ⬇️
Click here to get more out of this email by reading it online instead of in your email.
Oldster is a lot of work and runs on paid subscriptions. You know what to do…
Alright, with no further ado, I give you the fifth edition of the Oldster Bookshelf, with something for just about everyone. Under each cover image is the author’s preferred buy link.
Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel
Published in 2024 by Basic Books
“On farms and in factories, Americans once had little choice but to work until death. As the nation prospered, a new idea was born: the right to a dignified and secure old age. That project has benefited millions, but it remains incomplete—and today it’s under siege.
In Golden Years, historian James Chappel shows how old age first emerged as a distinct stage of life and how it evolved over the last century, shaped by politicians’ choices, activists’ demands, medical advancements, and cultural models from utopian novels to The Golden Girls. Only after World War II did government subsidies and employer pensions allow people to retire en masse. Just one generation later, this model crumbled. Older people streamed back into the workforce, and free-market policymakers pushed the burdens of aging back onto older Americans and their families. We now confront an old age mired in contradictions: ever longer lifespans and spiraling health-care costs, 401(k)s and economic precarity, unprecedented opportunity and often disastrous instability.
As the population of older Americans grows, Golden Years urges us to look to the past to better understand old age today—and how it could be better tomorrow.”
Shibui: The Japanese Art of Finding Beauty in Aging by Sanae Ishida
Published in November, 2025 by Sasquatch Books
“Discover “shibui” — the Japanese philosophy of finding the simple, subtle beauty that emerges with time. Through watercolor illustrations, personal stories, and mindfulness reflections, this book offers Eastern wisdom to help readers embrace healthy aging with joy and grace.
Shibui introduces readers to a transformative Japanese approach to aging that celebrates the subtle beauty, wisdom, and joy that emerge with time.
Through engaging personal essays, watercolor illustrations, and practical activities, Japanese-American author Sanae Ishida presents a refreshing alternative to Western anti-aging messages. Each chapter explores a different dimension of aging beautifully: beauty (bi), health (kenkou), purpose (mokuteki), wealth (tomi), connection (tsunagari), and approaching life's end (owari).”
Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being by Andrew Weill, MD
Originally Published in 2007 by Anchor Books
This book is another one recommended by my dad. It’s been out for some time (nearly 20 years!), and is a longstanding bestseller. (Hey, my dad is 91 and thriving, so maybe he’s onto something.)
“A unique book about aging that draws on the science of biogerontology as well as on the secrets of healthy longevity—from ‘American’s best-known doctor’ (The New York Times Magazine).
In each of his widely acclaimed, best-selling books, Dr. Andrew Weil has been an authoritative and companionable guide through a uniquely effective combination of traditional and nontraditional approaches to health and healthy living. Dr. Weil explains that there are a myriad of things we can do to keep our bodies and minds in good working order through all phases of life. Hugely informative, practical, and uplifting, Healthy Aging is infused with the engaging candor and common sense that have made Dr. Weil our most trusted source on healthy living.”
Odd Woman Out: Exposure in Essays and Stories by Melanie Chartoff
Published in 2021 by Books Fluent
“From her 1950s childhood in a suburb she describes as an “abusement park”, to performing Molière on Broadway, to voicing characters on the popular “Rugrats” cartoon series, Melanie Chartoff was anxious “out of character”; preferring any imaginary world to her real one. Obsessed with exploring her talent and mastering craft, fame came as a destabilizing byproduct.
Suppressing a spiritual breakdown while co-starring on a late-night comedy show, Chartoff grew more estranged from whoever she was meant to be. But given a private audience with a guru, she finally heard her inner voice, played by ‘70s soul singer Barry White, crooning, “Get out, baby!”. All the while, she’s courted by men with homing pigeons and Priuses, idealized by guys who want the girl du jour from TV to be their baby rearer or kidney donor.”
Beginning as an actor On and Off Broadway, currently featured in the Safdie Brothers Andy Kaufman documentary, Thank You Very Much, Melanie Chartoff is best known for the characters she created on Fridays, Seinfeld, Newhart, and Rugrats. Recently published in the NYTimes, McSweeney's, The Jewish Journal, Funny Times, Five on the Fifth, Glint, Verdad, Bluestem, Evening Street Press, Lothlarien Poetry Journal, and six editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Odd Woman Out: Exposure in Essays and Stories is her first book. Read her most recent Oldster essay, “Raising Mom”:
Dava Shastri’s Last Day: A Novel by Kirthana Ramisetti
Published in 2021 by Grand Central Publishing
“A dying billionaire matriarch leaks the news of her death early so she can examine her legacy—a decision that inadvertently exposes secrets she spent a lifetime keeping. With the limited time she has left, Dava Shastri must come to terms with the decisions that irrevocably altered her life and make peace with her family.”
“Dava was inspired by my work as an entertainment journalist. Whenever I reported on a celebrity’s death, I thought about whether other notable people would read the coverage and wonder how they would be remembered after they were gone. The novel combines several of my lifelong interests: family, legacy, music and celebrity. (Since then, I have written two more novels: Advika and the Hollywood Wives and The Other Lata.)
Ghetto Celebrity: Searching for My Father in Me by Donnell Alexander
Originally published in 2003 by Crown, and reissued in April 2026 by Designsimple
“Donnell Alexander grew up sideways in the cramped spaces of Sandusky, Ohio, the son of a devout mother and a dad named Delbert who was a protean genius who jacked a thousand identities-from pimpin' them hoes to preaching the gospel-but skipped out on fatherhood when his son was in diapers. Donnell unwittingly replayed Delbert's tragedy as farce until he finally wrote himself his own story, becoming a star of California's freewheeling alternative press, spreading the gospels of punk and hip-hop in print. After finding a career and starting a family of his own, Donnell was drawn to reconnect with the vanished Delbert, and when he did, things fell apart, as they tend to in the grip of ghetto celebrity.”
Donnell Alexander was born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, where he was a member of the state champion 1982 Sandusky Blue Streaks cross-country team. He attended Sacramento City College and Fresno State University. He has been a journalist in New York and all up and down the great West Coast, covering music and sports. More recently his focus has leaned to politics, culture, and the cannabis industry. You can find his current work at donnellalexander.substack.com. In 2024 he took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.
More Rules for Aging: Make the Most of Your Ridiculous Wondrous Life by Roger Rosenblatt
Published in June by Turtle Point Press
“Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging was a major national bestseller when it burst onto the scene as “the humorous, thinking man’s self-help book” (Newsday) twenty-five years ago. Now, Roger is back with bang. More Rules for Aging contains nearly twice as many rules, so is twice as instructive and twice as funny. As with the original, the laughs engendered are laughs at oneself: “Nobody is thinking about you yet,” “Run when they say, ‘We must do this again,’” et al. The key to enjoying this book is a willingness to turn every commonly held supposition on its head. A rule such as “Don’t use common sense” is useful if one realizes how little people prize common sense. “Screw it up royally” speaks to the indispensable value of making mistakes.”
Winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize, a Peabody Award, an Emmy, and two Polk awards, Roger Rosenblatt is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Cold Moon and Making Toast. A former essayist for for Time magazine and for PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, he launched his podcast Word for Word with Roger Rosenblatt in 2018 and Write America, a national weekly broadcast reading series about healing the nation's divides, in 2021.
Don’t Fight Back: And 10 Other Myths About Crime, Personal Safety, and Gender-Based Violence by Meg Stone
Published in May by Beacon Press
“From a nationally recognized violence-prevention expert, an accessible guide that debunks the most pervasive myths about crime and offers evidence-based strategies that make us safer.
A specific image of violence and how to avoid it lives in a lot of our imaginations. What some of us fear most is shaped not by the strongest evidence but by the most viral horror stories.”
Meg Stone, a violence prevention expert, traces the origins of these myths and how they are used to scare us into submission. While political leaders and social-media influencers use myths about crime to divide us, this book equips readers with facts and concrete action steps.” Meg Stone took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire last year.
Mudlark: A Novel by Mary Helen Specht
Published June 9th by Travelers’ Tales/Solas House
“A dazzling dystopian novel about the fall of a troubled rockstar, her long-lost solo album, and her daughter’s epic search for redemption in the ruins of New York City.
A speculative literary novel set in near-future New York City, where 38-year-old Neko works as a mudlark, scavenging in the wreckage of the flooded metropolis. When she discovers the masters of her mother, Jenny Sweet's, only solo album — long since lost to the floods of time — it raises questions about Jenny's disappearance 25 years earlier, and the possibility that she may still be alive. What follows is one last lark that will take Neko on a personal odyssey through her mother's past and her own search for hope and understanding.
“Combines the spellbinding worldbuilding of Station Eleven with a rock-and-roll heart . . . A luscious, awe-inspiring, and gorgeously written novel about love and how it will save us, no matter what the future holds.” —Amanda Eyre Ward
The Haul: A Heist Novel by Gary Phillips
To be published July 14th by Soho Crime
“A professional thief takes the chance of a lifetime when he agrees to mastermind the raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker in this action-packed heist thriller set in the heart of contemporary Los Angeles, from master of West Coast noir Gary Phillips. Perfect for fans of Sara Paretsky and Michael Connelly.
After years of close calls, O’Conner—the former “Warlord of Willow Ridge”—spends most of his time in semi-retirement, running his legitimate businesses and playing pickleball. Except for his longtime girlfriend, no one in his middle-class neighborhood is the wiser to his double life.
But O’Conner’s past refuses to stay dead. When he’s approached with a job he can’t resist, he agrees to mastermind his biggest heist yet: a multi-million-dollar raid of a tech billionaire’s secret bunker, hidden beneath his newly constructed basketball arena. As the job goes down, testing O’Conner’s mettle with new challenges, the promise of the score attracts ghosts from his past he thought were long buried.”
Broken Chocolate: A Novel by Rachel Miranda
Published in March by Vine Leave Press
“In Rachel Miranda’s brilliant and beautiful debut novel, family love is the strongest power in the universe. Broken Chocolate is both a suspenseful medical drama and a marvel of empathy and insight.” - Oldster Questionnaire-taker Brian Morton, author of Tasha: A Son’s Memoir, winner of the Pushcart Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship
The Sandor family has always been close, gathering around the table for birthday breakfasts and Friday night dinners, drawn in by pastry chef Liv’s inventive cooking and Sam’s cautionary tales of his patients in the Yale Brain Injury department—reminders of how suddenly life can change. But when fifteen-year-old Zoey—popular, ambitious, and the bright center of the family—falls into a coma after a freak accident, their world fractures.”
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
Originally published in 2020, and updated with more information in paperback in 2025 by Riverhead Books
“There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.
Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.”
Twenty-Nine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mohave by Deanne Stillman
Originally published in 2001 by William Morrow & Co, and more recently reissued by Angel City Press
“Twentynine Palms is a compelling account of the devastating murder of two young girls by a troubled Marine in the rural California desert town of Twentynine Palms.
More than just a murder-mystery, Twenty-nine Palms is a passionate dissection of desert life itself. With the desert as a main character, Deanne traces the family histories of the murder victims back for generations, in one case to the Donner Party and the other to a shack in the Philippines, and then, the inevitable and fatal arrival of each family in the Mojave.
Her focus is the world of rootless kids who live in the shadows of a giant military base on the edge of the modern American frontier. The Mojave becomes a character for Stillman, as powerful and immediate as any of the actors in this real-life drama. The first edition of Twentynine Palms was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and was named one of the best books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review.”
Harvest of What Remains by Wendy Drexler, with drawings by Connie Saems
Published in February by Lily Poetry Review
“Harvest of What Remains reflects on Wendy Drexler’s life caring for her husband, who has Alzheimer’s disease.”
“This book is a tribute to all caregivers, whose dedication often goes unrecognized. It offers comfort and understanding to anyone who has cared for someone with dementia, or anyone who has witnessed the slow unraveling of memory. It should be obligatory reading for all clinicians working with patients with dementia and their families as a loud and needed reminder of the moving humanity in the privilege of our responsibility.
It is a gift to be able to share in this journey through these poems, and I hope readers find the same solace and insight I have.” -Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Unhitched: The Essential Divorce Guide for Women by Oona Metz
Published in January by Gallery Books
“Unhitched inspires women to use their divorce as a transformational opportunity for growth and self-discovery. Nationally recognized divorce expert and therapist Oona Metz provides a compassionate yet practical roadmap through every stage of the divorce process. Whether making the decision to end a marriage, coping during separation, dealing with the rollercoaster of emotions, coparenting, or navigating life after divorce, this book offers a wealth of psychological tools to guide you forward.
With over thirty years of experience supporting women as they navigate divorce, Metz weaves together practical guidance, relatable vignettes, and engaging exercises to help make the journey through divorce less overwhelming and more empowering.”
Loving Arrangements: Stories about Modern Living and Loving edited by by Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood
Published in June by Rutgers University Press
“Love songs and Hollywood romances make it all sound so simple: You find your soul mate, move in together, get married, never stray from the path of monogamy, and live happily ever after. But real life tends to be more complicated. Many couples pursue alternative living arrangements, and some even pursue alternative loving arrangements.
The twenty-nine personal essays in this collection offer a variety of perspectives and experiences with nontraditional relationships and forms of cohabitation. The contributors include married couples who live in separate cities and single people who find companionship through communes and cohousing. These essays also present varied outlooks on the practice and ethics of having multiple partners, with some embracing large polycules while others opt for “monogamish” relationships. Everyone has a different story to tell, from close friends living together to form a chosen family to couples navigating the shifting boundaries of their relationship as one partner begins a gender transition. With contributors across generations and representing the full ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States, Loving Arrangements demonstrates the myriad ways that we live and love today.”
Nine Lives: My Risky Road from Fifties Rebel to Feminist Critic by Claire Kahane
Published in June, 2025 by Brandylane Publishers
“In this tell-all memoir, a woman in her eighties, born during the Great Depression to Jewish immigrants, unveils her intimate self-transformations in the course of nine decades. Determined at an early age to prove herself a free spirit in a male dominated world, as a young adult Kahane went on the road, hitchhiking her way into and out of risky adventures and romantic affairs, ceaselessly chasing new experiences. But what started out as a “road book” takes a different turn in midlife when, influenced by the insights of psychoanalysis and feminism, she became a feminist professor, mother, and wife. In later life, her story changed tracks again when a visit to Auschwitz compelled her to confront her own family history of loss and renewal. The memoir ends with a surprising new twist that opens to a hopeful future. In this long and hard-earned coming-of-age story, readers will find a piece of themselves.”
Claire Kahane is a retired Professor of English at the University at Buffalo and a visiting scholar in the English Department at the UC Berkeley. A feminist-psychoanalytic critic, she has published books and essays on hysteria in British fiction, the Gothic as a genre, and Holocaust trauma in literature. She lives with her partner in Berkeley and still travels the globe, from New York to Scotland to Tanzania. But she no longer hitchhikes.
My Mother’s Boyfriends: Stories by Samantha Schoech
Published in January, 2025 by 7.13 Books
“A daughter witnesses her mother grow angels’ wings. A mistress begins writing letters to her lover’s wife. Thanks to a genealogy test, a middle-aged woman meets a sister she’s never known, and they’re very...different.
The 14 insightful, witty, and often laugh-out-loud stories in My Mother’s Boyfriends are populated by angels, earthquakes, sibling complexity, love affairs gone bad, and children left to figure it out on their own. Woven throughout is an abiding sympathy for the mess-ups, bad choices, and missteps humans make despite their best intentions.”
“Witty and utterly enchanting.” -Vendela Vida, author of We Run the Tides
New Stanton: A Novel by Maxwell Vagus
Published in June by HeavySixer Productions
“Harold Dean, a shady alcoholic, wakes up in a town that doesn’t exist and cannot escape until he finds his Chevy Malibu. The problem is—he’s not the only one hunting it. Relying on a host of eccentric characters, Harold ultimately discovers he’s really searching for redemption and that he and the Malibu are one and the same. New Stanton by Maxwell Vagus is a surreal neo-noir that captures the gravitas and whimsy of lost worlds and lost selves.”
The Music of Bees: A Novel by Eileen Garvin
Published in April by Dutton
“Alice Holtzman is not young, beautiful or thin. She’s not a wife or a mom. (My UK editor called her “unfashionable,” but I don’t think fashion has ever crossed Alice’s mind much past which Carhart’s she was going to wear.)
And yet Alice Holtzman is a force when readers meet her in my novel, The Music of Bees. She’s an unappreciated county employee. She’s a beekeeper, and she’s recently, quite unexpectedly become a widow.
Alice is deep in her grief when she has a chance meeting with Jacob Steveson, a teenager with troubles of his own—most obviously the fact that an accident at a party left him unable to walk.
Their unlikely friendship and connection through the honeybees on Alice’s farm leads them both on a path to healing and connection. A national bestseller, The Music of Bees was named a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a Good Housekeeping Book club Pick, a People Magazine Best New Book, an IndieNext Pick, a Library Reads Pick, a Christian Science Monitor Pick, a Washington Post Best Summer Reads, and more.”
Vamoose: Stories by Kathy Anderson
Published in June by Vine Leaves Press
“Two lesbian librarians launch a life-changing friendship in the back of a pickup truck at Texas Gay Pride in 1989. The Queen of the Stilt Walkers fights off her larcenous brother to keep her home. A lesbian former foster child endures Kundalini yoga class in her quest for love. A murderous nun takes revenge on her mother for forcing her into the convent. Dogs keep biting a new lesbian couple and they don’t know why. Sisters fight off an invasion of mice in the room where their mother is dying.
Filled with crackling humor and surprising loves, Vamoose is a propulsive collection of fifteen stories of women leading lives of self-determination, small triumphs, and subversive pleasures.”
“In these amazing stories, told with such fierce humor and control, characters reckon with the end of things, the fallout, the cleaning up, but Anderson knows how that loss, that untethering, can create a feeling of ascendancy. That's how I felt reading these stories, lifted up toward something I hoped I'd find." Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here
To be considered for a future edition of the Oldster Bookshelf, you can email me at oldsterbookshelf@gmail.com with the following:
A press release.
A brief synopsis of the book.
A brief bit on your background as an author and how you came to publish it.
A cover image.
Your preferred buy link.
***You’ll be making my life easier if you keep it all short and sweet.
See, here’s the problem with this list: where do you start? Heist novel? Japanese sense of beauty in old age?
Don’t worry, I’ll muddle through.
I just finished The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, a short beautifully written novel about love, life and aging - At 77 years old, it certainly spoke to me & I have recommended to all my friends. 🩷