Books

The threads of the sisterhood’s magical struggle converge toward a reckoning. Book 3 of The Obsidian Sisterhood.

Newly-awakened Crone Claire Emerson races the clock to gather the remaining Crones and master her elemental magic as the dark Mages close in. Book 2 of The Crone Wars, an urban fantasy where a woman’s power arrives after fifty.

The Obsidian sisterhood is drawn deeper into conflict as their magical entanglements grow more dangerous. Book 2 of The Obsidian Sisterhood.

A sixty-nine-year-old former nun and two-time black belt is drawn into a web of dark magic and obligation. Book 1 of The Obsidian Sisterhood, an urban fantasy proving age is no barrier to power.

A companion collection in the Menopausal Superheroes series, bundling two interlude novellas and a set of short stories. It goes behind and between the novels to deepen the world of Patricia the Lizard Woman, Fuerte, Flygirl, and Dr. Cindy Liu, exploring what it means to be a hero at any age or stage of life.

Springfield refuses to stay saved. A new mutation sends the women’s powers into dangerous, unstable spikes, and only Flygirl is unaffected. Racing to find a cause and a cure, she must cooperate with the very scientist who changed their lives, while romances, weddings, and divorces test whether these heroines can truly have it all.

With great power comes great frustration. As the newly transformed women adjust to life as superheroes, Patricia presses on alone to find the woman who changed them, while Jessica and Linda train with a covert agency known as The Department. Old threats resurface, and controlling their new abilities proves harder than any of them expected.

Claire ventures alone through the treacherous god realm to rescue her trapped protector before Morok finds the ancient Crone magic hidden there. Book 4 of The Crone Wars.

The Menopausal Superheroes step out of the shadows, and the pressure mounts on every front. As public scrutiny intensifies and their personal lives strain under the weight of secret identities, the women must navigate fresh dangers while holding together a fragile alliance and the relationships that matter most.

A short-story collection in the Menopausal Superheroes series, gathering four original tales that fill the gaps between the novels. The stories trace the fraught relationship between Patricia, the Lizard Woman, and her former friend turned mad scientist Dr. Cindy Liu, exploring what it means to be a hero in midlife and beyond.

Stripped of her magick, Claire alone knows the dark god Morok has infiltrated the Crones—and must recover her power in time to stop him. Book 3 of The Crone Wars urban fantasy series.

When four ordinary women hit menopause, the change turns out to be far stranger than hot flashes. After using the same small company’s natural products, Helen can shoot fire, Patricia becomes bulletproof, Jessica floats, and Linda gains immense strength and a new male body. United by that one common link, the unlikely heroines set out to find the woman responsible.

Book three of the Veil of Time series. Drawn once more into eighth-century Scotland, Maggie lands in the middle of a bitter struggle between the rising Christian Church and the old Pictish traditions — a conflict centered on Iona, the sacred Isle of the Druids, where monks mean to raise a monastery on ground hallowed by generations of Fergus’s ancestors. Reunited with Fergus and his now-grown daughter as the fighting builds, she is pulled for the first time not only into the past but into an alternate future: one where the old beliefs were never erased, and where women lead a thriving technological society in the shadow of Dunadd.

Why it’s here: This is Celtic time-slip fantasy rather than a story about later life, published by Sibylline Digital First, whose whole list is women authors over 50. It sits on CroneHub for the thread running underneath the adventure — an older faith set against the church that displaced it, and an imagined future in which women hold the authority. A long view of women’s power, written by a woman writing in her own second half.

In Edinburgh’s COVID-lockdown spring of 2020, cold-case detective DCI Karen Pirie learns of an unfinished manuscript by a recently dead crime novelist — one whose plot reads like a blueprint for the real, unsolved disappearance of a university student. As Karen digs, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge where lies are indistinguishable from truth. The Queen of Crime delivers one of her most fiendishly clever Karen Pirie cases yet.

Why it’s here: A genre thriller rather than a book about aging, but its lead is a seasoned, midlife woman investigator — competence and command held by an older woman at the center of the story.

When the company running her failing colony orders everyone offworld, seventy-year-old Ofelia quietly refuses to go — she has buried a lifetime here and will not spend her last years being managed. Alone and unexpectedly free, she finds she is not alone after all when the planet’s native people make contact and come to revere her as a “Nest Guardian.”

A rare science-fiction novel with an old woman at its heart: Hugo-nominated, and quietly radical about age, autonomy, and self-worth.

A surviving Morok and a wave of displaced gods throw Claire back into a war she thought she had won. Book 5 of The Crone Wars.

In an alternate 1952, a meteorite strike devastates the U.S. East Coast and forces humanity to race for the stars before Earth becomes unlivable. Dr. Elma York — a former WWII WASP pilot and gifted mathematician working as a human ‘computer’ for the fledgling space program — battles entrenched sexism and her own anxiety to win a place among the first women astronauts. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.

Why it’s here: Elma is in her thirties in this first book, but the series grew from Kowal’s short story ‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars,’ in which Elma is a 63-year-old astronaut called back for one last mission — an older woman’s story of nerve and competence that anchors the whole arc.

The second Lady Astronaut novel carries Elma York from the Moon colony toward the first crewed voyage to Mars, navigating the politics, racism, and personal toll of who gets to leave a dying Earth. A tense, deeply human account of ambition and sacrifice in the space race.

Why it’s here: Part of a series anchored by an older-woman protagonist — Elma begins as a young pilot and ages across the arc into the 63-year-old astronaut of Kowal’s original ‘Lady Astronaut of Mars.’

In 1950, farm wife Irene Pickett — sick of being cast as the queen of pickling and laundry — joins three other firebrand women to save their failing local museum, battling a glory-hungry rival, county bulldozers, and sabotage.

Why it’s here: Older women, tired of being typecast, band together to claim agency and pull off a miracle — exactly the reclamation CroneHub is about.

A standalone novella set between books two and three. Flygirl and Fuerte bring the Unusual Cases Unit’s Good Will Tour to a Springfield hospital close to Flygirl’s heart, but the visit is upended when a desperate woman, denied experimental treatment for her wife’s cancer, forces the heroes to choose between good publicity and saving lives.

Esther is sixty, a grandmother, and barred by the authorities from using her magic — until her adult son is snatched by a dragon lord across the dimensional Beyond. She reassembles her Hex, six aging, disgraced mages, and goes after him anyway.

Less swordplay than sharp wits, old loyalties, and a mother who refuses to be sidelined — a fast, warm fantasy about competence that doesn’t expire with age.

The Hugo Award-winning novelette that launched the Lady Astronaut series. Decades after her fame, Dr. Elma York is sixty-three and grounded on a Mars colony, caring for her dying husband, when she is offered one last mission — a chance to fly again that would mean leaving him for good. A quietly devastating story about aging, love, duty, and what we owe the people with whom we have built a life.

The fourth Lady Astronaut novel returns to Elma York on the first permanent Mars base, where a covered-up disaster and the hard work of building a fair society off-world test the colony — and her.

Why it’s here: The continuing arc of Kowal’s Lady Astronaut, whose protagonist ages from young pilot toward the 63-year-old astronaut of the series’ origin story — a long view of one woman’s life in science and space.

Running alongside the events of The Fated Sky, this installment shifts to astronaut Nicole Wargin — former WASP pilot, governor’s wife, and reluctant spy — as she hunts a saboteur threatening the Moon colony while Earth First terrorism escalates back home.

Why it’s here: Its narrator, Nicole, is a seasoned older astronaut reckoning with power, a political marriage, and a body that doesn’t always cooperate — an unusually rich portrait of a capable woman in the second half of life.