Older Women Leading Historical Fiction (Plus a Bonus for All Access Members)

A letter-loving septuagenarian named Sibyl uses the letters she writes to make sense of the world around her. But when a letter arrives that forces her to confront one of the most painful periods of her life, Sibyl realizes she can’t keep using these letters to keep people at arm’s length. This will mean changing the way she lives her life…and also posting the one letter she never thought she’d send.

Roxanne Gay called this buzzy book “a perfect novel” on Goodreads, and your mom’s book club is almost certainly reading it—if they haven’t already!

Neighbors Hortensia James and Marion Agostino share a hedge and an animosity that belies their eighty-odd years of age. Both women, one white and one Black, have led good lives with impressive careers but have been failed by their late husbands. Now living out their golden years in post-Apartheid South Africa, the women pass their time in committee meetings, volleying thinly veiled insults back and forth. But when unforeseen circumstances force them together, their bickering begins to turn into deeper debates and reminiscences of the lives they’ve both lived. Will it be enough to bridge the divide of racism and animosity that has kept them at each other’s throats all these years?

Based on the life of a remarkable real woman, The Woman With No Name tells the story of Yvonne Rudellat, the first woman recruited by Britain to become a saboteur during WWII. Estranged from her husband and with her adult daughter working in a factory for the war effort, Yvonne is already feeling adrift when her apartment is bombed in the Blitz. She wants to do her part, but no one wants anything from an unassuming, middle-aged woman. That is, until she’s recruited by SOE (Special Operations Executive) to become a sabotage agent. Defying the expectations of all the men who underestimated her, Yvonne takes to spy school with enthusiasm and is soon off to France, where her work will set her against Nazis who will go to any length to uncover the spies in their midst.

Aaliya Sohbi may be viewed as a “useless appendage” by her family, but they don’t know about the books she’s translated into Arabic — one every year for the last 37 years. She keeps the books tucked away, never read by anyone but herself. Plagued by memories of past and present Beirut and her experiences in the Lebanese Civil War, Aaliya finds it easier to keep to herself. In many ways, she’s made exactly the life she wants for herself: divorced, independent, and surrounded by books. But in other ways, she struggles with her purpose in life and what the coming years will bring.

This novel, based on an Athabascan legend passed down in the Yukon River Valley of Alaska, is the story of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter. The women, deemed burdensome, are left in the wilderness to die. Now, with no one else to rely on, they’ll have to dig down deep to survive the unrelentingly harsh landscape. It’s a story of survival, community, and forgiveness, even in the face of utmost betrayal.