Novels with Older Protagonists

The Big Finish / Brooke Fossey

A curmudgeonly senior who would avoid a nursing home forges an unexpected bond with his estranged granddaughter, an abused child who is rapidly succumbing to the alcoholism that once painfully overshadowed his own life.

Women in Sunlight: a novel / Frances Mayes

Four American women become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer’s complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams, and shifting senses of adventure and bravery.

The Red Address Book / Sofia Lundberg

Living alone in her Stockholm apartment, a ninety-six-year-old woman reminisces through the pages of a long-kept address book before starting to write down stories from her past, unlocking family secrets in unexpectedly beneficial ways.

How it all Began / Penelope Lively

When Charlotte Rainsford is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message, a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true, an old-guard historian tries to recapture his youthful vigor with an ill-conceived idea for a TV miniseries and a middle-aged central European immigrant learns to speak English and reinvents his life with the assistance of some new friends.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: a novel / Rachel Joyce

Given days to live and attended by a cast of well-wishers, Queenie Hennessy hides the existence of a long letter to Harold Fry revealing shocking and beautiful truths about her life.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: a novel / Rachel Joyce

Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand / Helen Simonson

Major Pettigrew lives in a small village in the English countryside. After the death of his brother he forms a friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. They share a love of literature and loss of their spouses, and soon their friendship blossoms into something more.

Still Life with Bread Crumbs: a novel / Anna Quindlen

Moving to a small country cabin, a once world-famous photographer bonds with a local man and begins to see the world around her in new, deeper dimensions while evaluating second chances at love, career, and self-understanding.

A Man Called Ove: a novel / Fredrik Backman

A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.

News of the World / Paulette Jiles

A live news reader traveling the antebellum south is offered $50 to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, back to her family in San Antonio in this new novel from the author of Enemy Women.

The Lido: a novel / Libby Page

An anxiety-riddled cub reporter for a small London paper is assigned to cover the closing of a local rec center and bonds with an 86-year-old widow who has swum in the community pool every day since childhood.

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper / Phaedra Patrick

In this poignant, charming debut, 69-year-old Arthur Pepper stopped engaging with life a year ago, when his wife of 40 years died. But the discovery among her things of a charm bracelet he had never seen before prompts a quest to discover the origins of the bracelet and all of its charms. His adventures take him from his home in York through the English countryside, and on to Paris and India.

The Good House / Ann Leary

Hildy Good lives in a small town on Boston’s North Shore. She is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She is also a raging alcoholic. She has also fooled herself into thinking that moderation is the key to her drinking problem. As if battling her demons was not enough to keep her busy, Hildy soon finds herself embroiled in the underbelly of her New England town, a craggy little place that harbors secrets.

Three Things about Elsie: a novel / Joanna Cannon

A novel set in England about eighty-four-year-old Florence, a resident in a nursing home, who has fallen in her apartment, leading her to think about her childhood friend and the secrets of their past that are about to come to light.

The Leisure Seeker / Michael Zadoorian

John and Ella Robina, a couple married 50+ years–she has stopped her cancer treatments, he has Alzheimer’s– kidnap themselves from the adult children and the doctors who seem to run their lives, and steal off on a forbidden vacation determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds and sneak a little extra time.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk / Kathleen Rooney

Embarking on a walk across Manhattan on New Year’s Eve in 1984, eighty-five-year-old Lillian Boxfish recalls her long and eventful life, which included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America, whose career was cut short by marriage and loss.

This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!: a novel / Jonathan Evison

Embarking on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise, septuagenarian Harriet reunites with her estranged daughter and confronts pivotal events from her life surrounding the true character of her husband, who died two years earlier.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine / Gail Honeyman

A socially awkward, routine-oriented loner teams up with a bumbling IT guy from her office to assist an elderly accident victim, forging a friendship that saves all three from lives of isolation and secret unhappiness.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport / Cathleen Schine

Betty Weissman loses her elegant New York apartment when her husband of nearly fifty years divorces her for what he says are irreconcilable differences but is in actuality another woman. She and her two grown daughters who quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home and whose own lives are in varying states of disrepair and confusion regroup in a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage.

The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared / Jonas Jonasson

Confined to a nursing home and about to turn 100, Allan Karlsson, who has a larger-than-life back story as an explosives expert, climbs out of the window in his slippers and embarks on an unforgettable adventure involving thugs, a murderous elephant and a very friendly hot dog stand operator.