About Better Times

Better Times Press is run by Morgan Sutherland. He's a licensed massage therapist who specializes in chair massage for seniors, and a certified dementia practitioner. Most weeks he's working inside senior living communities, in lounges and solariums and memory cafés, with people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.

The books came out of that work. Specifically, out of the conversations Morgan has during chair massages — noticing what kinds of questions get someone to open up and what kinds get a polite nod. Generic questions get the nod. Ask about a specific Beatles song, or what was on television on Saturday nights when she was raising her kids, or whether anyone in her family went to Woodstock, and you get a story.

So Better Times Press writes those questions. In large print. About the decades the readers actually lived through.

Our Mission

We don't write down to the people we write for. The questions are sharp enough that the answer isn't obvious, even to the person who lived through it. The covers don't look like they belong in a waiting room. We want a twelve-year-old grandkid and an eighty-two-year-old grandparent to be able to play at the same table, and we want both of them to have to think.

Who We Make Books For

If you've ever sat with a parent and run out of things to say, the books were written with you in mind. Activity directors and caregivers buy them too, usually when they're out of fresh activities. A lot of buyers are also seniors themselves, picking up a trivia book that doesn't look designed for someone who's stopped being interesting.

What the books do, when they work, is open a door to a story nobody's heard in forty years.