Aging powerfully, stoking creativity and keeping the peace in "peace on earth"—this month's best lifestyles books cover all these topics and more.

★ The Power Age

Illustrations of luminaries such as Michelle Obama, Patti Smith and Zadie Smith are a delightful feature of The Power Age: A Blueprint for Maturing With Style, but it’s the interviews with a wide range of inspiring, accomplished women—all over 40 and most of them 50-plus—that make me want to buy a copy of this book for every one of my girlfriends. “Entering your second act is not so scary as it once seemed,” writes Kelly Doust in the introduction. “It takes years and years of trial and error, and life lessons, and loss, to come home to ourselves and figure out who we are.” Doust is an Australian writer, and many of the women she talks to are based in Australia or New Zealand, but their collective wisdom certainly knows no national boundaries and shines brightly enough to power a universe of its own.

Make Time for Creativity

In the world of creativity guides, Brandon Stosuy’s Make Time for Creativity feels fresh. Stosuy’s got impeccable creds as the co-founder of the excellent web publication The Creative Independent and a collaborator with countless artists of all stripes. From this fertile ground he delivers a four-part look at the creative process, from work-life balance to necessary downtime, girded by insights from the writers, musicians, visual artists and others he has interviewed over the years. I especially like the “Daily Rituals” section, designed to show “how rituals make you feel present for your creative practice and able to treat it like sacred time.”

Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year

I wasn’t ready to think about the holidays when I first picked up Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year, but now that I’ve read it, bring on the mulled wine and evergreen boughs. In soothing prose, Beth Kempton helps readers locate the elements they love most about the before, during and after of the season, with an emphasis on a hygge-type appreciation of the winter months. Kempton, the author of an excellent book on wabi sabi, helps us dial down the noise of what doesn’t appeal. She doesn’t urge us to celebrate Christmas any one way but encourages us to “savor the hush” of the very end of the year—“the fleeting pause when time bends and magic hovers between the bookends of the season.”