Elderly widow Addie Moore pays a visit to her aging widower neighbor, Louis Waters. They were never close, just knew each other peripherally, which makes the reason for this social call all the more intriguing. Addie would like to know if Louis is interested in sleeping with her. Now, now, this scenario was conceived by the late, great Kent Haruf—Our Souls at Night is no 50 Shades of Geriatric Grey. Set in the same fictional Colorado town as his National Book Award-nominated Plainsong, a town with its fair share of gossips, Addie and Louis embark on an unlikely friendship, an antidote to the loneliness they most exquisitely felt at night. As this friendship deepens, it is tested by said busybodies and meddling family members, plot points that almost distract from what makes this novel such a fitting and sweet swan song. Our Souls at Night was inspired, in part, by Haruf’s own marriage and the intimate, late-night conversations he and his wife relished, just like Addie and Louis. And just like Addie and Louis, Haruf proved that you’re never too old to reinvent yourself, take risks, find love, and write a great novel. --Erin Kodicek

Kent Haruf is the author of six novels (and, with the photographer Peter Brown, West of Last Chance). His honours include a Whiting Foundation Writers' Award, the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, the Wallace Stegner Award, and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation; he was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The New Yorker Book Award. Benediction was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. He died in November 2014, at the age of seventy-one.