Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of combatting it, with the help of his wife Dina. Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority. This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert discussing...

When Ben Fish responds to an ad that reads "Driver Needed Seven Days Excellent Pay No Druggies, Drunks, or Felons, " it's because of the money ($10,000) but also to get away from his dead-end life. He has just graduated from college with a useless degree, has gotten dumped by his longtime girlfriend, and is still mourning his father, who died in a freak accident. Yet Ben finds himself in for more than he expected, as the old man who placed the ad...

"Old Keb Wisting is somewhere around ninety-five years old (he lost count awhile ago) and in constant pain and thinks he wants to die. He also thinks he thinks too much. Part Norwegian and part Tlingit Native (with some Filipino and Portuguese thrown in), he's the last living canoe carver in the village of Jinkaat, in Southeast Alaska. When his grandson, James, a promising basketball player, ruins his leg in a logging accident and tells his grandpa...

Lena is a young actress in Stockholm. Christoph writes her a message. He wants to meet her. He just indicates where and when and that he wants to tell her a story. She must have wondered about such a note. They meet, go for a walk and he tells her that he wrote a book, just the one. Lena says her boyfriend is also a writer, writing his first novel. He knows, he says: 'That's why I want to tell you my story.' This story changed Christoph's life and...

"Once, Detective Buck Schatz patrolled the city of Memphis, chasing down robbers and killers with a blackjack truncheon and a .357. But he's been retired for decades. Now he's frail and demented, and Rose, his wife of 72 years, is ill and facing a choice about her health care that Buck is terrified to even consider. The future looks short and bleak, and Buck's only escape is into the past. But Buck's past is under attack as well. After 35 years on...

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon-- the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox,...

Identical twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones farm their Welsh Borders property, "The Vision," for half a century, their vigor, pain, angers, and involvements leading them to a sense of salvation.