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The Retirement Plan: The Ashworth Home for the Formerly Nefarious
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 18 2026
Pages: 158
Weight: 0.48
Height: 0.34 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Cocoon meets John Wick in this witty, slow-burn cozy mystery filled with sharp humor, buried pasts, and the quiet danger of a retirement home where the residents used to rule the world.
The pamphlet promised resort-style amenities, a quiet community, and individualized care. It neglected to mention the eighty-year-old resident in the crafts room casually recalibrating a live thermal detonator.
When four years of intense hospital nursing leave Mara Voss exhausted and swimming in debt, a job at the hyper-exclusive Ashworth Home seems like the perfect, quiet career correction. The fieldstone facility is beautiful, the salary is generous, and the residents are remarkably well-behaved-right up until the butterscotch pudding runs out.
Mara quickly realizes that unique care considerations is corporate speak for an entire roster of retired supervillains, international spies, and deposed dictators. Under the watchful eye of Dr. Malevola Grimm-an elegant woman who once ran whole continents by sheer force of personality-the residents spend their golden years managing cognitive decline, organizing jigsaw puzzles, and bickering over the good armchair by the window.
But when a mysterious visitor arrives with an ancient grudge and a deadline, the carefully guarded peace of The Ashworth Home fractures. An old, world-altering secret lies buried behind the garden toolshed, and the external threats are closing in just as a zero-tolerance compliance auditor arrives to review the facility's license.
Faced with a choice between bureaucratic safety and the fiercely protective community she has come to love, Mara must choose a side. Because while these former monsters may be eighty, frail, and starting to lose pieces of themselves, they are still the absolute best in the business-and they have no intention of going quietly.
Perfect for fans of The Thursday Murder Club and cozy crime with a speculative twist, The Retirement Plan is a warm, wry, and gently ominous novel about legacy, dignity, and the extraordinary lengths we go to protect the family we choose.
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