Take two retired Boomers. Add one elderly mother-in-law and her deranged Chihuahua, a steady diet of sleep deprivation, and a passel of monotonous routines. What do you get? Days (and sometimes nights) filled with laundry, mixed nuts, repeats of repeats, and better-laugh-or-you'll-cry moments. Late-life care can be the elephant in the room. We ignore it because ... well, what do you do with something large and foreign that you'd rather not discuss? Should you wait until it devours the houseplants and starts in on the pantry, or plan for a future that includes provisions for eldercare? Through...

So, this atheist walks into a church ... and it's not the first line of a joke. It's a story of research for a novel turning personal as one writer contemplates the God-believers around her. Raised by a Christian mother and an agnostic father, the author long felt apathetic toward religion. This journey, however, takes her to Jewish, Foursquare, Catholic, Christian Science, and other worship services, exposing her to so many believers and seekers that she begins to wonder about how it is that some people crave God and others don't. In "Atheist in Church," Pjo Riley chronicles her visits to...