Fiction is full of young women at the start of everything. This shelf is for the others: the women who are already decades in, and far more interesting for it.
These ten heroines are over fifty, and several are well past eighty. They start over, solve murders, walk thousands of miles, fall in love, break the rules and refuse, finally, to be overlooked. Some of the books are funny, some will move you, and all of them treat an older woman as the heroine of her own story rather than someone's mother or someone's problem.
If you are of a certain age yourself, you will find good company here. And where one of these women's spirit could happily hang on a wall, I've pointed you to a print that matches her mood, from the shop next door.
Take a book from the shelf
Before you go
If you have a moment this evening, think of the oldest woman you admire, and one thing she does that you would like to still be doing at her age. Then do a little of it today. The heroines on this shelf would approve.
