Washoe County Library System

One cool evening in October 2006, the night before he was to turn 40, Rich experienced a chilling glimpse of his future. Nearly 50 pounds overweight at the time and unable to climb the stairs without stopping, he could see where his current sedentary lifestyle was taking him. Plunging into a new way of eating that made processed foods off-limits and prioritized plant nutrition and daily training, Rich morphed - in a matter of mere months - from out-of-shape...

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

"Three lifelong friends plus a dangerous, sexy new stranger in town add up to a scorching summer of manipulation, obsession, and murder, from the acclaimed author of The Hunting Wives. A woman in the forest thinks she's going to die. I know he's coming back for me. Jen Miller, Kittie Spears, and Cynthia Nichols have been friends since childhood. Now approaching forty, their lives have changed, but their insular East Texas town has not. They stay sane...

"From the New York Times' bestselling author of The Vacationers, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college--their own kids now going to college--and what it means to finally grow up well after adulthood has set in. Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities...

"Adie Lou Krugers ex never understood her affection for what her parents called their Cozy Cottage, the charming, ramshackle summer homecomplete with its own set of rules for relaxingthat shes inherited on Lake Michigan. But despite the fact shes facing a broken marriage and empty nest, and middle age is looming in the distance, memories of happy childhoods on the beach give her reason for hope. Shes determined not to let her husbands affair with...

"The ultimate summer read--featuring indelible characters, crackling wit, and sophisticated storytelling--about one season when everything in a woman's life goes wrong On Memorial Day weekend in a seaside town on Long Island, Ruthie, her still-adored ex-husband, Mike, and the couple's sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Jem, are packing up the last bits of their household in preparation for the yearly arrival of a wealthy renter from Manhattan. It...

"Business consultant Rose Josten might not have officially reached "pug lady" middle age, but she's already got the pugs-along with their little Gucci coats and trash-lovin' appetites. Still, life is good, with her work, her sisters, and a secret hobby creating incredibly tactile (if surprisingly sexy) mindfulness videos. So why does it feel like it's not quite enough? Which is exactly when Ash Stewart enters camera left, and Rose's world suddenly...

A childless middle-age couple finds their lives changing when they befriend a twenty-something couple.

According to author Lear and the memory experts she taps in the book, the memory lapses that begin in middle age are typically no cause for alarm. In fact, remembering less in later years is rarely a sign of Alzheimer's or any other scary memory-loss condition. It's just a part of normal aging. On her hunt for answers, Lear explores why names are the first things to go and what can be done about it, why we forget certain things on purpose, why we...

A biography of one of the leading intellectuals in postwar America, author of the controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem, which introduced the concept of banality of evil, changing in a single phrase our view of humanity. Hannah Arendt, one of the most gifted and provocative voices of her era, was a polarizing cultural theorist—extolled by her peers as a visionary and berated by her critics as a poseur and a fraud. Born in Prussia to assimilated Jewish...