Dancing Fish and Ammonites is a memoir by Penelope Lively. Although the author has used memory and history to fuel her fiction career for more than fifty years, she has rarely given her readers a glimpse into her early life and the influences on her work. This book stretches from Lively’s childhood in Cairo to her stint as a student at a boarding school in England. She reflects on the sweeping social changes she witnessed in Britain during the twentieth century. She describes her immense love of archeology and the fragments of ancient cultures that have made life’s journey with her—including a shard of pottery from Egypt that depicts dancing fish and ammonites which she found on a Dorset beach. Finally, she reflects on the process of aging and what her life looks like now.

What If…A Lifetime of Questions, Speculations, Reasonable Guesses, and a Few Things I Know for Sure is by Shirley MacLaine. The author uses her acerbic wit to convey a lifetime of questions asked and lessons learned. Always funny and feisty, MacLaine speculates on a wide range of matters, spiritual and secular, humorous and deep, personal and universal. For instance, she asks, “What if hope is the most dangerous emotion? What if a frog had wings? What if our political leaders actually led? What if Downtown Abbey was full of Americans? What if, for some reason, I couldn’t be creative and work?” Known for her rather unconventional views on life and death, MacLaine is funny, imaginative, and altogether likeable in this work.

French Women Don’t Get Facelifts: the Secret of Aging with Style & Attitude is by Mireille Guiliano. The author—who has also written French Women Don’t Get Fat and French Women for All Seasons—brings her signature wit, advice, and storytelling to the subject of aging. Delightfully encouraging, Guiliano reveals a French woman’s most guarded beauty secrets for the benefit of all. She discusses the exorbitant prices paid for anti-aging lotions, the proper way to dress for one’s age, how we feel when we gain a little bit around the middle, and what happens when you accidentally forget how to flirt. Guiliano then gives us proactive tips on how to look and feel great without resorting to “the knife.”

Fields of Grace: Faith, Friendship, and the Day I Nearly Lost Everything is by Hannah Luce with Robin Gaby Fisher. On May 11, 2012, a small plane was flying to a Christian youth rally carrying five young adults. The plane crashed into a field in Kansas and only two survived. The first was twenty-seven-year-old ex-marine Austin Anderson who died the next morning due to his injuries. The other survivor was the twenty-two-year-old daughter of a renowned youth evangelist. In this book, Hannah Luce tells her story. She gives a glimpse of what it was like the day they boarded the plane and the long, difficult road to recovery she was forced to walk. Most importantly, Hannah explains how the crash changed everything she thought she knew about family, friendship, and faith.

Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, & Love Affairs is a memoir by Pearl Cleage. Born and raised in Detroit, playwright and author Pearl Cleage found that it was the forces and experiences she encountered in Atlanta that most shaped her life. She worked with the first Africa-American mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson and she was married to Michael Lomax, now the head of the United Negro College Fund. Cleage recalls, not only the political fights, but also the pull she felt from her own passions. This pull would lead her away from Lomax and cause her re-evaluate her own feelings about feminism and self-fulfillment. She tells her story in a series of diary entries that date from 1970 through 1988.

Amidst the Shadows of Trees: a Holocaust Child’s Survival in the Partisans is by Miriam M. Brysk. Hailing from Warsaw, Poland, Miriam M. Brysk is a Holocaust child-survivor. She was interned in the Lida Ghetto in Belarus, but she and her parents escaped and joined the nearby Partisans in the Lipiczany Forest. In 1947, she came to American and, with no formal education, went on to receive her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She went on to have a career as a scientist and medical school professor. After Brysk retired, she became an artist, writer and public speaker telling the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust. This very personal account of what it was like to grow up in the shadow of such atrocities illustrates Miriam’s strength and what it takes to be a survivor.

New Life, No Instructions is a memoir by Gail Caldwell. This poignant story is about the surprising ways life can begin again, at any age. Caldwell explores topics like what to do when your personal story changes gears in midlife, how change starts and is constant, how our connection to our loved ones is important, and finally, she discusses the importance of hope. This is a book about how we keep going and make our own second chances when life throws us a curve. She also tells us that we may have to dig down deep to find the joy again, but not to give up because hope is always with us.