The Tiny Slice

“After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.”

—Joyce Meadowcroft, from The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Book Club Faves

We asked booksellers and other bibliophiles, including members of AARP’s The Girlfriend Book Club (thegirlfriend.com/book-club), for their favorite novels with older characters, from 2000 onward. Among the titles that popped up repeatedly: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022), A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (2014), The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg (2017) and the beloved recent bestseller Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (2025).

Go to aarp.org/oldercharacters to check out our full list of 50 picks.

Reviews

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout The Olive Kitteridge author introduces Artie Dam, a longtime high school teacher who’s unaccountably lonely. That feeling is exacerbated when a secret about his family comes to light. “Mostly we travel through life unsighted,” he notes in this beautiful tale. (May 5)

The Midnight Train by Matt Haig In this memorable, moving novel by the mega-best­-selling author of The Midnight Library, Wilbur, 81, at the moment of his death, is given a chance to revisit and reassess his life by way of a ghostly train that transports him through the highs and lows in his past. (May 26)

Take Me With You by Steven Rowley College professor Jesse reckons with sudden solitude after Norman, his partner for 30 years, mysteriously vanishes. Jesse is forced to consider the man he wants to be without Norman at his life’s center. It’s witty and poignant, by the author of The Guncle. (May 19)

Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth Nobody on her quiet street knows that cranky Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, 81, was once known as Mad Mabel, said to be cursed and a murderer. Then a little girl moves in nearby and wants to know everything about Elsie, and her walls start to crumble. (April 21) —Christina Ianzito