If Mad Mabel Was a 5-Star Read, Try These 18 Books Next

I finished Mad Mabel and immediately wanted more books with characters like Mabel. She’s complicated, unpredictable, funny, and has the kind of personality that makes you curious about everything she’s lived through. I especially loved slowly learning about her past and realizing there was so much more to her than you first expect.
So naturally, I started looking for books that could give me a little of that same feeling. These books like Mad Mabel feature unforgettable characters and surprising pasts. Most of them feature older protagonists, but a few are much younger and just as special as Mabel.

Books Like Mad Mabel

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Sybil Van Antwerp has spent years writing letters to family, friends, authors, and even people who may never read them. But when someone from her past returns, she has to face something painful she has tried to forget. I think what makes this such a good pick after Mad Mabel is Sybil herself. She’s smart, stubborn, funny at times, and full of opinions. But there’s also a lot about her that you don’t understand right away.



Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

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Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have spent forty years working as assassins for a secret organization. They’re finally ready to retire when they discover their own bosses have marked them for death. Now they have to rely on decades of experience and each other to survive. It’s much more action-packed than Mad Mabel, but it has that same fun of watching characters everyone underestimates prove they still have plenty of fight left in them.


Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman–and a killer–of a certain age.

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The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise by Colleen Oakley

Tanner needs a place to live, so she takes a job caring for Louise. Neither of them is happy about it. But Tanner soon notices some strange things about Louise’s past, including a possible connection to a famous jewelry heist. Before long, the two end up on the road together. If you loved Mabel’s secrets and unpredictable side, I think you’ll enjoy Louise too.



Twenty-one-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it.

One slip on the rug. That’s all it took for Louise Wilt’s daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Bottom line — Louise wants a caretaker even less than Tanner wants to be one.

The two start off their living arrangement happily ignoring each other until Tanner starts to notice things—weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on the suspect of one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history who looks eerily like Louise? And why does Louise suddenly appear in her room, with a packed bag at 1 a.m. insisting that they leave town immediately?

Thus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who—if they can outrun the mistakes of their past—might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.

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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Vera Wong runs a tea shop, keeps a close eye on her grown son, and has opinions about pretty much everything. Then she finds a dead man in her shop and decides the police could use her help, whether they want it or not. Her investigation brings a group of strangers into her life and turns into something much bigger than solving a crime. You will love Vera. She’s nosy, confident, funny, and has a huge personality. 


Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing…
Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.

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The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron live in a retirement community where they meet every Thursday to look through old unsolved murder cases. It’s mostly a hobby until a real murder happens.The mystery is fun, but I think the friendships and characters are what really make this book.



In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

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The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

Judith Potts is seventy-seven, lives alone in a large old house, creates crossword puzzles, and is perfectly happy doing whatever she wants. Then she hears a gunshot while swimming in the Thames and becomes convinced she’s witnessed a murder. When the police don’t take her seriously enough, Judith starts investigating herself and picks up two unlikely partners along the way. She’s independent, stubborn, clever, and exactly the kind of character who can carry an entire book.


To solve an impossible murder, you need an impossible hero…

Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape

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The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick

Arthur Pepper has kept his life carefully organized since losing his wife, Miriam. While sorting through her belongings, he discovers a charm bracelet he has never seen before. Tracking down the meaning behind each charm takes him from London to Paris and even India—and reveals a version of his wife he never knew existed. I loved how this story shows that even the person closest to you can have a whole past you knew nothing about. That part reminded me of Mad Mabel.




In this poignant and sparkling debut, a lovable widower embarks on a life-changing adventure

Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden.

But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met–a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.

Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters with big hearts and irresistible flaws, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is a curiously charming debut and a joyous celebration of life’s infinite possibilities.

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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Harold Fry is recently retired and living a very ordinary life when he receives a letter from Queenie, an old friend who is dying. He sets out to mail her a reply but suddenly decides to keep walking—all the way to her hospice hundreds of miles away. It’s funny in places, sad in others, and full of the kind of messy history that slowly changes how you see its main character.


Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him – allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.

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The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

Ona is 104 when an eleven-year-old boy starts visiting her every Saturday to help around the house. They become unlikely friends, and Ona slowly shares stories and secrets from her past. Then one Saturday, the boy doesn’t show up. His father eventually arrives to finish what his son started. I think this is a great pick after Mad Mabel if you loved discovering the life and secrets behind such a memorable character.



The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don’t they teach you anything at school?

So says 104-year-old Ona to the 11-year-old boy who’s been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she’s confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades.

One Saturday, the boy doesn’t show up. Ona starts to think he’s not so special after all, but then his father arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son’s good deed. The boy’s mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that the world can surprise us at any age, and that sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find ourselves again.

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The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by Annie Lyons

At eighty-five, Eudora Honeysett has decided she’s ready to die and wants to do it on her own terms. Then ten-year-old Rose moves in nearby and barrels into Eudora’s carefully controlled world. Along with their neighbor Stanley, the two form an unexpected little friendship that begins changing how Eudora sees the time she has left. Like Mad Mabel, this book gives you a main character who may seem difficult at first, then slowly lets you see everything that made her that way.


Infused with the emotional power of Me Before You and the irresistible charm of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Be Frank with Me, a moving and joyous novel about an elderly woman ready to embrace death and the little girl who reminds her what it means to live.

Eudora Honeysett is done with this noisy, moronic world—all of it. She has witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age and has lived a full life. At eighty-five, she isn’t going to leave things to chance. Her end will be on her terms. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland, a plan is set in motion. 

Then she meets ten-year-old Rose Trewidney, a whirling, pint-sized rainbow of color and sparkling cheer. All Eudora wants is to be left alone to set her affairs in order. Instead, she finds herself embarking on a series of adventures with the irrepressible Rose and their affable neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley—afternoon tea, shopping sprees, trips to the beach, birthday celebrations, pizza parties. 

While the trio of unlikely BFFs grow closer and anxiously await the arrival of Rose’s new baby sister, Eudora is reminded of her own childhood—of losing her father during World War II and the devastating impact it had on her entire family. In reflecting on her past, Eudora realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead. 

But now that her joy for life has been rekindled, how can she possibly say goodbye? 

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Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce

Margery Benson has spent years living a small, disappointing life until one terrible day at work pushes her to finally do something completely different. She decides to travel to New Caledonia in search of a rare golden beetle she has dreamed about since childhood. Her traveling companion, Enid Pretty, is absolutely not the person Margery would have chosen. Their strange partnership turns into a funny, moving adventure about friendship, reinvention, and finally doing the thing everyone thinks you’re crazy for attempting.


She’s going too far to go it alone.

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist–the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.

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The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey

Missy Carmichael lives alone in a big empty house and spends much of her time replaying her past, especially the mistakes she wishes she could change. Her family is scattered, her husband is gone, and she has gotten used to keeping the world at a distance. Then a chance encounter brings new people and eventually a dog, into her life. Missy can be prickly and difficult, but that’s part of what makes watching her slowly open up so satisfying.


The world has changed around Missy Carmichael. At seventy-nine, she’s estranged from her daughter; her son and only grandson live across the world in Australia; and her great love is gone. Missy spends her days with a sip of sherry, scrubbing the kitchen in her big empty house and reliving her past–although it’s her mistakes, and secrets, that she allows to shine brightest. The last thing Missy expects is for two perfect strangers and one spirited dog to break through her prickly exterior and show her just how much love she still has to give.

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The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

Albert Entwistle has spent decades keeping his head down, delivering mail, and avoiding getting too close to anyone. When he’s told he must retire at sixty-five, he realizes work was basically the only thing connecting him to the outside world. So Albert makes a huge decision: he’s going to find George, the man he loved and lost many years earlier. It’s a story about secrets, regret, and realizing that you haven’t necessarily missed your chance to change your life.


Albert Entwistle is a private man with a quiet, simple life. He lives alone with his cat Gracie. And he’s a postman. At least he was a postman until, three months before his sixty-fifth birthday, he receives a letter from the Royal Mail thanking him for decades of service and stating he is being forced into retirement.

At once, Albert’s sole connection with his world unravels. Every day as a mail carrier, he would make his way through the streets of his small English town, delivering letters and parcels and returning greetings with a quick wave and a “how do?” Without the work that fills his days, what will be the point? He has no friends, family, or hobbies—just a past he never speaks of, and a lost love that fills him with regret.

And so, rather than continue his lonely existence, Albert forms a brave plan to start truly living. It’s finally time to be honest about who he is. To seek the happiness he’s always denied himself. And to find the courage to look for George, the man that, many years ago, he loved and lost—but has never forgotten. As he does, something extraordinary happens. Albert finds unlikely allies, new friends, and proves it’s never too late to live, to hope, and to love.

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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Eleanor Oliphant has built her entire life around routines. She goes to work, spends weekends alone, and has little interest in making friends. Then she and her coworker Raymond help an elderly man who collapses on the street. She’s much younger than Mabel, but she has the same kind of unusual, sometimes frustrating personality that makes you curious about what happened in her past.



No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart.

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The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy

Denny Voss lives with his mother and his beloved Saint Bernard, George, in rural Minnesota. His life is unusual but fairly peaceful—until a series of increasingly strange events somehow ends with Denny facing a murder charge. This is a good choice if you love a main character who feels completely different from the people you usually meet in fiction.



A man who is defined by his limitations sets out to fight a murder charge—and discovers unexpected truths about himself, his family, and the world at large.

On the surface, Denny Voss’s life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At thirty years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay—the result of an accident at birth—Denny has always felt that he has “a good life.”

So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate—after crashing a sled full of guns into a tree?

As Denny awaits trial, his court-appointed therapist walks him through the events of the past year. Denny’s had other scuffles with the law, the first for kidnapping a neighbor’s cantankerous goose. And then there was the time he accidentally assisted in a bank robbery. It seems like whenever Denny tries to do the right thing, chaos ensues.

Untangling the events around the murder reveals even more painful truths about his family’s past. He’s always been surrounded by people who love him, but now it’s up to Denny to set his life on a new course.

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Too Old for This by Samantha Downing

Lottie Jones has built herself a wonderfully boring retirement filled with bingo, friends, and small-town gossip. There’s just one problem: decades ago, she was a serial killer, and nobody knows. Then an investigative journalist arrives asking uncomfortable questions about several old cases. This is definitely darker than Mad Mabel, but Lottie has that irresistible combination of a seemingly ordinary present and a past that makes you think, “Wait, WHAT?”



A retired serial killer’s quiet life is upended by an unexpected visitor. To protect her secret, there’s only one option left—what’s another murder? From bestselling author Samantha Downing.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.

Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends. 

When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.

But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her

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Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

It’s New Year’s Eve 1984, and eighty-five-year-old Lillian Boxfish decides to walk through Manhattan. As she moves through the city and talks to the people she meets, she looks back on her career in advertising, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and some very difficult periods of her life. There’s no big mystery driving the story. The pleasure comes from getting to know Lillian and realizing how much history can sit behind one person walking down the street.



It’s the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk.

As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega clerks, chauffeurs, security guards, bohemians, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be—in surprising moments of generosity and grace. While she strolls, Lillian recalls a long and eventful life that included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America—a career cut short by marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a breakdown.

A love letter to city life—however shiny or sleazy—Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop

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The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

In 1933 Mississippi, Meg, Birdie, and Charlie are three women in very different situations, but none has much control over what happens next in her life. When their paths cross, they come up with a risky plan that could either change everything or make their problems much worse. The Depression-era setting makes this very different from Mad Mabel, but there’s a similar appeal in its messy, funny, determined characters who aren’t interested in quietly accepting the hand they’ve been dealt.



In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.

Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?

The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer—an epic testament to resilience, friendship, and the fierce, funny women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious—the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

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