Oldster Bookshelf #6
Featuring books submitted by Oldsters and others. Now with spotlight reviews by Lisa Marsh.
Readers,
Welcome to another edition of The Oldster Bookshelf. This month I’m adding another feature to this series—a brief spotlight review by my friend and colleague Lisa Marsh. This month she reviews Whistler, the latest novel by Ann Patchett, published in early June. Her review is down below this set of reminders. ⬇️
Please keep these caveats about The Oldster Bookshelf 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, and pays essayists, interviewers, and reviewers. You know what to do…
Spotlight Review of Whistler by Ann Patchett
by Lisa Marsh
I came to Ann Patchett in the middle of her career. My first was Commonweath, read in a year I challenged myself to read a book each week. I was hooked and then devoured Dutch House, especially because of its Philadelphia-area connection. I instantly felt at home in the book’s setting in the area of my youth. In Tom Lake, I identified with a life I lived years ago as a celebrity’s lover. I doubled back and read Bel Canto last year and it had me on the edge of my seat, telling the secrets of people’s ability to cope and change in unfathomable circumstances. Can we all radically adapt, or are the people of Patchett’s making super humans? I want to believe we’re all these people—Patchett makes me believe.
Just like she makes me believe in the love and connection between Daphne Fuller and Eddie Triplett in Whistler.
We meet Daphne and her husband Jonathan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As they traverse the galleries, it is clear there is a gentleman following them. Upon confrontation, they learn that the gentleman, Eddie, is the second ex-husband of Daphne’s mother. More importantly, he is the stepfather who was most important to Daphne in her young life, but then disappeared almost overnight.
The chance meeting is an emotional one for Daphne, as this is the first time she has seen Eddie since she was 9. And the last time they were together was while trapped in a car after an accident that caused more than physical damage. These moments are the catalyst for cracking this story wide open.
People have the amazing ability to compartmentalize—their feelings, their experiences, their traumas. Over time, these things can become secrets and memories that are hardly accessed. They can fade or they can sit just under the surface, coloring our moods or affecting our choices without our direct knowledge. And sometimes, they become so camouflaged, the owner of these secrets doesn’t even think to share them with the people who know them the best.
What follows for Eddie, Daphne and her family is an exploration of a past life where the truths are told, many for the first time. As readers, we can see how many of the choices Daphne made in her life were affected by those moments in her young life.
***
Some other thoughts: For lovers of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, you will find comfort in this similar setting. That could be said for many books set in New York where the characters visit the Met, but there’s a feeling in Whistler that the Fullers could pass Theo Decker at any moment.
Apologies to all who believe they’re getting a book about a horse. I’ll bet this cover illustration appeals to so many people who were horse lovers when they were young. I hope they’re not disappointed. But at the same time, there is a theme galloping through, and she’s lovely.
This concludes Lisa Marsh’s spotlight review of Whistler.
Alright, with no further ado, I give you the sixth edition of the Oldster Bookshelf, with something for just about everyone. Under each cover image is the author’s preferred buy link.
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old by Lucy Schiller
Published July 14th by Flatiron Books
“A profoundly personal investigation into the current state of eldercare and what it means to grow old in America.
Unlike many other cultures, our collective stance toward older people in the United States has long been one of casual avoidance and neglect. This attitude became brutally clear during the height of the COVID pandemic, when too many people saw elderly deaths not as tragedies but as foregone conclusions.
Like many of us, Lucy Schiller experienced this callousness firsthand when her grandmother passed away during the pandemic. In the wake of this trauma, propelled by equal parts grief and curiosity about her own fear of aging, Schiller embarked on an investigative journey to understand why the prospect of aging is so frightening and how being ‘old’ in America intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy.”
The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life by Ian Bogost
Published July 7th by Atria Books
“Bogost guides us to identify and appreciate the overlooked joys hidden in everyday life. By reforming how we approach ordinary tasks, we can rediscover the gratification embedded in the tactile world around us.
Humorous, thought-provoking, and practical, The Small Stuff reveals that finding joy isn’t about achieving monumental happiness or prolonged satisfaction. It’s about doing small things, deliberately and with attention, to unlock the basic pleasures that flavor our daily lives.”
Ian Bogost is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of eleven books.
The Power of No: A Celebration by Anna Holmes
To be published September 1st by Crown
“The Power of No releases us from our white-knuckled grip on agreeability. In this eclectic yet empowering book, Atlantic contributing writer Anna Holmes explores why it’s difficult for many of us to utter that two-letter word on its own, through an idiosyncratic mix of searing analysis, expert-led research, and stirring insights from the likes of Charlotte Brontë to Shonda Rhimes. From the linguistic, to the societal, to the psychological—from our impressionable childhood to the revelations of middle age—to sex, desire, and bodily autonomy, Holmes playfully traces how “no” shapes our lives and, if exercised properly, can radically change the way we carry ourselves and move about the world.
Equal parts heartfelt meditation and fiery manifesto, The Power of No is a call to embrace the invigorating truth that ‘no’ is a complete sentence.”
The Shame is Over: A Personal History by Anja Meulenbelt
To be published August 25th by Astra House
“Anja’s teenage life is troubled by her marriage to Toni, an Austrian man she met on holidays with her parents, and with whom she has a son, Armin. At nineteen, seeking freedom from abuse and rejecting traditional domestic roles, she leaves her marriage and begins the fight for her own path. Her next decade is shaped by the sexual liberation of the 1970s, as she discovers herself through a series of increasingly dramatic relationships with men, married men, and women all over Europe, all alongside the challenges of single motherhood, and an ever-deepening commitment to feminist and political causes. As her emotional and political consciousness grow, Meulenbelt finds both purpose and community in activism – and begins to redesign what it means to live as an autonomous woman.
First published in 1976, The Shame is Over blends a raw account of Meulenbelt’s evolution as a mother, lover and political thinker with an incisive portrayal of the struggles women face in their pursuit of autonomy and equality. Meulenbelt doesn’t shy away from the internal tensions of the feminist movement – its contradictions, divisions, and emotional costs. In a haunting final passage, she imagines a dialogue with her younger, insecure self, offering a powerful metaphor for the liberation she seeks not only for herself, but for all women.”
Punk in 50 Pieces: Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave, and the Five Years That Changed Pop Music Forever by Kevin Dettmar
To be published September 8th by Harper
“Punk in 50 Pieces retells the story of punk’s cultural earthquake. Kevin Dettmar traces the evolution of this rock ‘n’ roll revolution, revealing how classic early punk (The Ramones, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop) gave birth to both post-punk (Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four) and New Wave (Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo).
Standing beside classic works such as Please Kill Me, Lipstick Traces, Rip It Up and Start Again, and England’s Dreaming, Punk in 50 Pieces paints a vivid portrait of an era, a sound, and the artists and attitude that made it unforgettable. It’s the perfect introduction for a new generation of rebels without a cause and a master playlist for die-hards who may no longer be slam-dancing in the mosh pit but have never forgotten the music.”
A Tender Age: A Novel by Chang-Rae Lee
Published August 11th by Riverhead Books
“A spellbinding exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants, A Tender Age joins the rich tradition of the American bildungsroman. The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caufield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.
Devastating in its emotional precision, A Tender Age captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away—then thinking about it for the rest of his life.”
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, as well as My Year Abroad, On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.
The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money by Jean Chatzky
To be published September 8th by Avery
“You’ve been saving for retirement for decades: paying yourself first, maxing out your 401(k) or IRA contributions, compromising on things you want today in order to make tomorrow possible. But what happens when you get to the end of your earning years? How do you take the money you’ve amassed and not only make it last as long as you do, but do it in a way that brings you the most fulfillment and the least amount of stress?
The data shows that people entering retirement often can’t bring themselves to spend. But when their money comes as a steady monthly paycheck, they feel much more confident in using it to live life to the fullest. Many find they can spend double with no risk of running out. New research shows that a Forever Paycheck is even associated with better health, lower chances of disability, and a substantially longer lifespan.
Whether you plan to work to 50 or 75, have a small 401(k) or a large stock portfolio, like to take risks with your money or always play it safe, bestselling author and financial expert Jean Chatzky provides a step-by-step plan for making your money work for you. Written in collaboration with AARP, The Forever Paycheck is packed with the information you need to plan for the future you want.”
What to Remember When You Are Forgetting: How to Live and Thrive with Memory Loss, Alzheimer’s, and Other Dementias by Dr. Zaldy Tan
To be published September 15th by Atria Books
“What if a dementia diagnosis could be an invitation to live? What if the first phase of the disease could be a catalyst to embrace a long-forgotten dream? Or to finally resolve a festering family conflict? Or to make new friends and create new, cherished memories?
Renowned memory and Alzheimer’s disease specialist, researcher, educator, and author Dr. Zaldy Tan, the Harvard-trained director of the Cedars-Sinai Memory and Healthy Aging Program, shares the definitive guide to thriving with dementia.
With an incredibly thorough and deeply comforting approach, Dr. Tan tackles everything from how to have a conversation with a person experiencing early memory loss, to how to prepare for an initial assessment for Alzheimer’s, and what accommodations and interventions are needed for every stage and type of dementia. He delves into the surprisingly hopeful research on new treatment and caregiving resources everyone should know, and reveals how other families and remarkable individuals he’s treated over the years have handled both difficult challenges and incredible triumphs after diagnosis.”
Those Who Vanish: Stories by Patricia Grace King
To by published September 1st by University of Pittsburgh Press
“Winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Taking place during the decades-long civil conflict, Those Who Vanish follows the stories of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats set on a collision course by war. Martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos are thrown together amid political violence. A peace worker shelters a rebel fighter. An exile returns to confront the legacy of her parents’ murders. The Virgin Mary begins appearing above an elderly woman’s stove. Set in a world of daily disappearances, the collection addresses a vital question: When all certainties are snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?”
Served Him Right: A Twisted Thriller of Betrayal, Vengeful Murder, and Long-Buried Secrets by Lisa Unger
Published March 10th by Park Row Books
“A Twisted Thriller of Betrayal, Vengeful Murder, and Long-Buried Secrets. Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister Vera for a brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend Paul. But when shocking news about Paul arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana’s best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch.
But Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul. As the investigation unfolds, rumors of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it can also be deadly. Ana and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long-buried history comes to light.”
The Fifth Season: Poems by Cori Howard
Published August 13th by Caitlin Press
“In The Fifth Season, award-winning journalist, essayist and poet Cori Howard explores the seasons of a woman’s life, from marriage and motherhood to divorce, what she aptly names “ disaster dating” and reinvention.
Through the arc of midlife, these poems offer a map back to the self and a return to longing and new freedoms.
In poetry that is raw, honest and personal, Howard carries the reader through the thresholds of her life, illuminating the experiences of womanhood and the questions we ask ourselves during times of transition and reimagination.”
This is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk by Paul Taylor
Published April 11th by Brutus Books
“In This Is Getting Old, Paul Taylor tells two intertwined stories. One is the tale of a long marriage shaped by time, as he and his wife navigate the realities of aging in the Adirondack community where their story began. The other is a candid reckoning with the Baby Boom generation, what it was given, what it got wrong, and what it leaves behind.
Blending memoir with cultural and political insight, this is a thoughtful, often funny, sometimes painful, and ultimately hopeful reflection on love, legacy, and the country we pass on to those who follow.”
What Are You Waiting For?: An Anthology edited by Kathy Curto
Published July 26th by Motina Books
“This poignant collection of essays, poetry, and artwork invites readers to reconsider what it means to wait. We all know the small, everyday waits—waiting for a plane to arrive, the workday to end, or a doctor to open the exam room door. But the writers, poets and artists in this collection explore this everyday human experience— at once universal and wholly unique-- in deeper and varied ways.
They write about waiting for a loved one to succumb to a terminal illness; waiting for heartbreak to soften; waiting for a child to grow up—and then wishing they were small again.
These twenty-nine contributors capture the essence of waiting through varied lenses and, ultimately, remind us: there can be richness and growth in the stillness, in the space that lives between the now and what comes next.”
Seeing Joy: A Story of Life, Death, and What Comes Next by Alexandra Grabbe
Published March 17th by Koehler Books
“Beatrice, one of America’s first career women, is still feisty at ninety-six. She lives with her daughter Alexandra, who has moved to Cape Cod to care for Bea while running a bed-and-breakfast out of their beloved old house. Like so many adult children caring for elderly parents, Alexandra must balance her new job as caregiver with her role as daughter—and it isn’t easy. Bea is demanding and very verbal. Her mind is like a fireworks display on a drizzly Fourth of July—some shots fizzle out, but there are still bits of brilliance.
After a knee ailment confines Bea to bed, it becomes clear her life will soon end. Convinced nothing comes next, Bea declares she doesn’t want to die. When deceased friends and family start “visiting” Bea’s bedroom, Alexandra wonders if her mom is hallucinating. Or could these visits have deeper meaning? Bea entertains her “guests” by hosting tea parties and reliving treasured memories. She reveals an unexpected kind of joy to Alexandra—a joy that brings peace and chases away the fear of death as they experience their final days together.”
And So We Moved to Petaca: Portrait of a New Mexico Community by lynn adler
Published June 30th by University of New Mexico Press
"A sublime photographic chronicle of the efforts of several counterculture families to adopt a traditional Nuevomexicano life in the tiny village of Petaca, New Mexico, in the early 1970s.
In the early 1970s there weren’t many women photographers, and fewer still who used their camera to make ethnographic studies. Lynn Adler was a self-taught photographer using an old 35 mm camera her mother had left to her. But her instinct for seeing the collision of cultures, along with her savant’s eye for constructing beautiful frames, allowed her to capture a moment both rare and spectacular in a tiny village in Northern New Mexico called Petaca.
At the time, Petaca was home to about fifty very traditional Hispano families with roots in the area going back well over a hundred years. The town had no schools, no hospital, no stoplights; it had one church, one bar, one dry-goods store, and a single gas pump. Spanish was nearly everyone’s first language, and the only real employment had been a mineral mine, shut down in the 1950s. Most families got by as subsistence farmers. These families were joined by people who had left San Francisco and New York City, seeking a simpler life. It was while visiting friends who had made this move that Lynn Adler made these photographs between 1970 and 1974.”
Aging Sideways: Changing Perspectives on Getting Older by Jeanette Leardi (AGING SIDEWAYS)
Self-published in 2024
Body: My Life in Parts by Nina B. Lichtenstein
Published in May, 2025 by Vine Leaves Press
“This front-end Gen X’er wonders ‘How the hell did I end up here, now, like this?’ The author uses her body to find her answers. In stand-alone but interconnected chapters (‘Eyes,’ ‘Belly,’ ‘Breasts,’ ‘Hands,’ etc.; 16 chapters in all), body parts serve as portals toward remembrances grounded in the physical body while linking to other forms of experience, with one goal: making sense of a life that she realizes—only through writing it—has been full of reactivity and agency, despite her rarely noticing it in the moment.”
Dying Words: A Novel by K. Patrick Conner
Published in 2012 by Nacl Press
“For the past 11 years, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Graydon Hubbell has been assigned to write obituaries, working in a corner of the newsroom called Section Eight, long occupied by the paper’s most cantankerous and often impolitic reporters. Initially, Hubbell regarded writing obituaries as a morbid and distasteful assignment. But now he views himself as a master of the genre, as capable of writing a final salute to the rich and powerful as a simple farewell to the quirky and notorious.
Then Hubbell learns he has cancer. He is determined to defy the disease and continue working for as long as possible, but as his career implodes through a series of mishaps, confrontations and mistakes, the obituary writer must finally confront the fact that he is dying, too. Written with humor and compassion, Dying Words is a novel about mortality and remembrance, the story of an aging reporter less afraid of dying than being forgotten.”
K. Patrick Conner is the former city editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Dying Words is his third novel.
Now You Are a Missing Person: A Memoir in Poems, Stories, & Fragments by Susan Hayden
Published in May, 2023 by Moontide Press
“Three devastating losses are at the heart of Susan Hayden’s lyrical memoir, Now You Are a Missing Person. The suddenness of each of these deaths ― her father, her childhood best friend and her husband ― sparks and guides a series of explorations to claim equilibrium and a sense of self. Stories, poems and fragments are woven together to trace Hayden’s search for identity and belonging through lovers and friends, some enduring, some ephemeral. She creates an intimate album of her life, from the 1970s to the present, evoked in an LA populated by troubadours and actors, both shining and fading. Raised in an observant Jewish family in the suburban San Fernando Valley, she struggles and finds her footing in an ever-shifting culture of expectations around body image, sexuality, motherhood, widowhood, and autonomy.”
Under Water: A Novel by Rachel Callaghan
Published in 2024 by Empower Press; Audio Book published in July.
“Submerged beneath layers of history lies a long-ago buried secret. During the pandemic lockdown, Iris Pearl impulsively relocates her dulling marriage across the country in a bid to revive it. But renovating their Prerevolutionary Pennsylvania homestead gives Iris more than she bargained for when she makes a gruesome discovery, one that hurtles her and Benny’s haunted past to the present.
Iris is desperately consumed by the desire to know what happened on her property over a century and a half earlier. Her search leads her to Irish immigrant Aoife Sprigett, the wife of Union soldier William. The further she digs into the mystery of Aoife’s fate, the deeper she reaches into her own secret history.”
Fancy Meeting You: A Novel by Louise Marburg
Published June 2nd by Blair Publishing
“Meet Laura Harrigan. Depending on who Laura is talking to, she’s a psychiatrist, a business consultant, or a mother of twin boys at Yale. That last one is a new lie she’s trying on for size. In reality, Laura is middle-aged, childless, “involuntarily unmarried,” and works a job far beneath her capabilities. She is a graduate of Harvard, but as she notes, “Meeting other people’s expectations is something I am famously unable to do.” Most nights, Laura can be found at Baltimore’s least-glamorous dive, The Chicken Box, where the bartender knows when to call her an Uber. At the weekend, she might be hooking up with a care home aide at her elderly father’s birthday party, much to the chagrin of her uptight sister, Nadine.
The story follows Laura in her home in Baltimore and elsewhere through her fiftieth year. Each chapter marks her encounter with a new character—a family member or two, a potential lover, complete strangers–each offering their own brand of wisdom or judgment or wacky opinion. Somehow, through these entanglements, Laura begins to gather bits and pieces of the self-knowledge she is lacking. Most, if not all, coming-of-age stories are about young people, but this is a middle-aged coming-of-age.”
Catching Lightning: More Letters from Prison by Patty Prewitt
Published in April by Some People Press
“‘Yesterday began as a pretty normal prison day.’ So begins Patty Prewitt’s final letter detailing her unexpected commutation and release from prison after thirty-eight years. In this second book, the follow up to Trying to Catch Lightning in a Jar, Prewitt describes the final twenty years of her incarceration with keen observation, humor, and compassion for those around her, while always maintaining her innocence.”
Read an excerpt from Catching Lightning on the Some People Press’s Substack.
Shovels & Chandeliers: A Collage of Poetry & Prose by Laura Chester
Published in April by Combray House Books
“Laura Chester has consistently been praised for her hypnotic literary technique,
liberating ethic and feminine metaphysic, with desire pulsating in the everyday.
Shovels & Chandeliers, a collaged selection of prose and poetry presents
her at her very best, confirming what the poet Robert Creeley had to say: ‘The lucid grace of Laura Chester’s writing is always a singular pleasure.’"
Bumblebee Season: 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.”
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.
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Whistler has surpassed Dutch House as my favorite Ann Patchett!
What a list. My credit card is saying, "Pace yourself, sweetpea." My TBR stack is already tall enough to ensure immortality!
I loved Whistler so much. I ordered The Power of No because of this list!