Five old friends meet to muse on life after ninety. Join their table

'These ladies are perfect company' The Times 'Lore Segal has the sharp analytic eye of a born writer' The New York Times Book Review 'There is humour even in the most heart-breaking of her stories' Telegraph Five close friends in their 90s meet - as they have for decades - for their monthly 'ladies lunch', to puzzle, and laugh at, the enigmas and affronts of ageing. When one of their number is placed unhappily in a home the others conspire to spring her. Lore Segal's witty, yet poignant, short story, Ladies' Lunch, appeared in the New Yorker in 2017, when she herself turned ninety. It was followed by four New Yorker sequels. For this sparkling collection, Segal returns to her group of erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians in Upper Manhattan offering startling insights into friendship and mortality. In the book's Other Stories, Segal includes tales from her acclaimed and prizewinning oeuvre to illuminate the hinterland of her characters - one of whom, like her, was a Kindertransport refugee. Beautifully crafted and profound, these stories distil the spirit of one of America's great authors to show us what a long life might bring.

"The everyday stuff of ageing, delivered with spark ... The writing is spare and short, telling us only what is needed, like snatches of conversation heard over the clinking of glasses. These ladies are perfect company" - Times

"Segal has the dazzling ability to merge the mundane details of life with the arc of human emotions" - The Washington Post

"There is humour even in the most heart-breaking of her stories" - Telegraph

"Deft, delicious stories that follow the lives of a group of long-standing friends... and perfectly pitched memoirist musings" - Daily Mail

"Lore Segal has the sharp analytic eye of a born writer" - The New York Times Book Review

"Friends die, we grow old, but stories survive ... we are lucky to have this piercing collection from a writer who has known for so long how to tell them" - Times Literary Supplement

"A spare moving portrait ... tracing the rhythms and bittersweet comedy of aging" - Spectator

"Moving and powerful" - Irish Times