Books

Jane Juska was a fearless explorer who set off to live an erotic adventure in her sixties and then write about it. She was a Berkeley, CA woman who placed an ad in the New York Review of Books personal section, saying she wanted to make love again before she died, and letting prospective partners know which literary figures she was prepared to discuss as foreplay.

She traveled to New York multiple times, meeting prospective lovers and capturing the stories in her book. Juska was a witty and unsinkable woman who would have been a great neighbor or dinner companion – although she seemed to be without fellow women travelers in her adventures. She broke through society’s image of what an older woman could be at a time when few women lived that life and almost no one wrote about it. A brave and valuable tale.

Unable to shake a midlife emptiness, Janet Wilson and her husband drive 25,000 miles across Africa; through tragedy and hardship they transform a decades-long marriage into deeper trust. A later-life story of reinvention.

Joan Price writes candidly about sexuality after sixty — desire, dating, body changes, and intimacy. Warm, funny, and deeply affirming for any woman wondering if her erotic life is over. It is not.

In this Taschen book (if you don’t know Benedikt Tashen’s outstanding publishing house, you should) Liz Earls talks of divorce, turning fifty and how these events changed her view of the world. If you are a woman who enjoys younger men, either to look at or to embrace, this book may be a great motivator for your writing.  Liz Earls shares sexy explicit photographs of her adventures with younger men in this uninhibited (and VERY Not Safe For Work)  collection.  Her verve is unmistakable.

At fifty-eight, just out of her longest relationship, Carolyn Lee Arnold decided not to look for a partner but to gather data — fifty first dates, tracked and reflected on, to work out what she actually wanted rather than what she had settled for twice before.

What follows is candid about desire, about dating as an older woman in the San Francisco Bay Area, and about the unexpected discovery that the project itself was the point.

When we write about sex, we often focus on the emotion it evokes – which is important and entirely understandable. Writing about sex itself, as a physical and sensory experience, it is easy to stumble into mechanistic descriptions. But in Free Fall, Rae Padilla writes sex scenes of unparalleled power and immediacy. Her language is gorgeous and her skill with a sentence will stop you cold. She immerses us in the visceral experience of this late life love affair, and then explores the countervailing pull of the narrator’s responsibilities to career and to an immensely demanding family life. If you have been ambushed by lust in your ripe years, if your desire has gone off like fireworks in the lives of the people around you, this story is sure to resonate. Free Fall is a book to relish first of all, and then to study for its lessons about the creative process. This book is a master course in writing about ripe love.

A financial guide for women divorcing after fifty, when there is less time to recover and the marital estate is usually the whole retirement plan. Settlement negotiation, asset division, and rebuilding on one income.

Fifty-two true accounts from people who had decided their romantic chapter was closed — widowed, divorced, discouraged, or simply tired of looking. Relationship coach Nancy Ripp White collects the meetings that happened anyway: a laundry room, a high-school flame resurfacing, a message arriving on an ordinary Tuesday. What runs through all of them is what she argues younger love rarely teaches — depth, clarity, gratitude, and a sharp sense of what time is worth.

The complications are here too, not smoothed over: adult children with opinions, blended families, grief that has not finished, independence nobody wants to hand back. Almost every story opens the same way — “I wasn’t looking” — and White’s point is that they were living, and love met them there.

At sixty, long-married psychotherapist Leah Fisher negotiates a year-long ‘marriage sabbatical’ of solo global travel — an alternative to gray divorce, and a reclaiming of self within a marriage.

After her father’s death and divorce from her husband of two decades, Rachel leaves a thirty-year career and navigates a year of disastrous midlife dating — dark, wry, and ultimately hopeful.

The foundational text on grief and the stages that have helped millions of people understand their own mourning. Essential for women navigating loss of parents, spouses, health, identity, and roles that often cluster in midlife.

Miriam Goodman looks beyond financial planning to the everyday choices that shape a satisfying retirement. Based on interviews with retirees, its 389 ideas address work, play, home, relationships, health, money, and creating a purposeful next chapter.

When Joan Price lost her husband, she found there was no roadmap for rediscovering intimacy after such a loss — so she wrote one. Drawing on her own widowhood and the candid stories of other widows and widowers, this warm, practical guide treats sexuality as a healthy, life-affirming part of moving through grief, on your own timeline and in your own way.

At 72, after a divorce, profound loss and decades without intimacy, Andrea Feinberg made an online dating profile. What follows is the account of what happened next — the men of every age who pursued her, the encounters that were funny, the ones that were flatly disappointing, and the confidence that turned up unannounced somewhere in the middle. She spent a career as a marketing MBA and started writing erotica in her seventies, and the same plainness runs through this: no euphemism, no apology for wanting what she wants. Less a book about sex than about what becomes available to a woman who stops accepting that the door has closed.

A psychologist recounts her turbulent thirty-year marriage to a Hollywood screenwriter; when he dies, she moves into widowhood and grief. A late-life reckoning with a long marriage and its loss.

A practical and emotional guide for women who find themselves suddenly single after 50 — whether through divorce, widowhood, or the end of a long-term relationship. Addresses finances, housing, identity, dating, and rebuilding a life.

The definitive guide for families caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or other dementias. Practical, compassionate, and comprehensive — a must-have for the millions of women who are dementia caregivers, usually for a parent or spouse.

A psychotherapist’s memoir of a long, bruising divorce and custody battle with a wealthy ex — a high-stakes fight that surfaces old wounds and, ultimately, a path to healing.

Joan Didion’s masterpiece on grief after the sudden death of her husband of 40 years. A lucid, devastating, and ultimately illuminating account of what it means to lose a life partner and face the future alone. Essential for any woman navigating widowhood or profound loss.

Miriam Goodman examines the relationship changes that arise when retirement means couples suddenly spend much more time together. Stories and practical advice help partners negotiate space, routines, expectations, and separate interests while building a rewarding shared retirement.

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön offers radical advice for facing life’s most painful moments — not by escaping them, but by moving toward them with openness. Profound comfort for women navigating divorce, loss, illness, or any form of transition.