Retirement Humour

This audiobook tells 15 short stories about people living at Burnside Retirement Village. Retirees buy into the community to socialize and appreciate the peace and quiet. WRONG! It's where over 55 year olds go who are bored, who enjoy a good fight, hate authority, argue like hell, question every rule and regulation, love to interfere in the lives of others and, of course, it is where those who create stories about such people live!

When a writer, down on his luck, takes an assignment as a reporter for a small-town newspaper he figures life couldn't get much worse or mundane, being that the town in which he is to reside is on one of those fabled roads that are seldom crossed...even by folks that are lost. But the town of Gabyvale is about to get interesting. Interesting enough to write home about.

Stewart Johnson had worked hard his entire life to reach retirement. However, his Golden Years would prove to be more of a challenge than he anticipated after his wife passed away. Seeking to find peace of mind and warmth in Florida, Stewart became surrounded by a tribe of Snowbird residents who took him on a journey of laughter and sleuthing inside a gossip riddled community filled with the humorous dysfunction of overgrown children.

A beautiful television personality comes home to mourn her mother, as well as the life she lost when her husband became ill and the pandemic shut down her show. When her husband dies suddenly, was she simply expressing her grief with murder? Was he the intended victim, or did she narrowly escape the well-deserved wrath of her neighbors?

The life of 79-year-old pensioner Peggy Smart is as beige as the décor in her retirement village. Her week revolves around aqua aerobics and appointments with her doctor. Following a very minor traffic accident, things have turned frosty with her grown-up children, and she is afraid they are trying to take away her independence. Noticing her memory isn't what it used to be, Peggy is taking ever more inventive steps to cover up her dwindling faculties.

Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, 2006

George Hall doesn't understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. 'The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.' Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At 57, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz.

Penny Rush has problems. Freshly divorced from her mobile knife-sharpener husband, she has returned home to Santa Barbara to deal with her grandfather, who is being moved into a retirement home by his cruel second wife. Her grandmother, meanwhile, has been found in possession of a sinister sounding weapon called ‘the scintilltor’ and something even worse in her woodshed. Penny’s parents have been missing in the Australian outback for many years now, and so Penny must deal with this spiralling family crisis alone. Enter The Dog of the North.

After stealing some priceless Russian jewels from the Stockholm Auction House, Martha and her gang flee to the small village of Hemmavid to lie low. But what they find is a village in crisis, so they decide they want to help revive the place. But to do so, the village needs money. In steps the League of Pensioners to arrange events to attract paying tourists. Which all turns out to be a rather delicate – and dramatic – balancing act when you are wanted by the police.

To say that 15-year-old Cooper isn't thrilled about the idea of spending his entire summer with his grandfather at The Last Stop retirement home is the understatement of the century. The fact that he has to work there for the privilege of sleeping on his grandfather's couch only adds insult to injury. The folks at the retirement home aren't too sure about him, either. His hair is forever hanging in his eyes, for one, and he seems determined to go the entire summer without uttering a single word.

Sewists, you deserve a good laugh. Beth is a former president of her local sewing guild and loves to sew. Rich has a lot of time on his hands after retiring early. Follow the humorous antics of these two as they adjust to his new found freedom. He wants to micromanage her days, and she just wants to sew! You’ll relate to their back and forth and chuckle at the anecdotes within. The only problem being how to put it down to get something else done, or finish work on a sewing project.

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.

You are the newest resident at the Mary Stuart Riley Home for People of Advanced Years, affectionately nicknamed the Last Stop by its residents. If you were thinking about quietly entering your twilight years, think again. And if you try slipping peacefully into the hereafter, your fellow white-hairs will pull you back by your ankles, all the while chanting something indecipherable but that can only mean life! No one ever dies at the Last Stop; they just decide to move on.

The gang from The Last Stop Retirement Community is back in 12 hilariously inspiring short stories and 14 new issues of "The Last Stop Bulletin"! "Finders Keepers": Find out what happens when new resident, Benji Little, takes to the halls with his FX-458 Gold Digger X-treme Model 2 Metal Detector.

The Desert Living Retirement Community is located smack dab in the middle of the Southern California desert, surrounded by windmills. Within this retirement community is a quaint little coffee shop running on a budget. Join the retirees in this quirky and comical short story as they spend their day drinking coffee and gossiping.