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Books

Recommended reads for women navigating midlife and beyond.

A Confluence of Obsidian

A Confluence of Obsidian

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2025

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

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A Gathering of Crones

A Gathering of Crones

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2022

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.

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A Tangle of Obsidian

A Tangle of Obsidian

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2025

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

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A Web of Obsidian

A Web of Obsidian

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2025

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.

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Agents of Change

Agents of Change

by Samantha Bryant · 2020

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.

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An Unexpected Life: A Memoir

An Unexpected Life: A Memoir

by Gloria Steinem · 2026

Steinem’s final memoir, published weeks after her death at 92. She returns to her early life and to the equal-rights movements she helped build, and looks forward rather than back — what the fight still needs, and who will carry it. The last chance to hear directly from the voice that shaped fifty years of American feminism.

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Be the Change

Be the Change

by Samantha Bryant · 2021

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.

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Change of Life

Change of Life

by Samantha Bryant · 2019

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.

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Crone Unleashed

Crone Unleashed

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2023

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.

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Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

by Brené Brown · 2018

Research professor Brené Brown’s guide to courageous leadership — vulnerability, trust, difficult conversations, and clarity of values. Powerful for women at any stage of their careers or community involvement, including those taking on leadership roles in midlife.

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Daring: My Passages

Daring: My Passages

by Gail Sheehy · 2014

Gail Sheehy, author of the landmark Passages, tells her own story: coming of age in postwar America, building a journalism career, navigating love and loss, and arriving at the second half of life with the same fierce curiosity she brought to her decades of reporting on how Americans grow and change.

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Elderhood

Elderhood

by Louise Aronson · 2019

Geriatrician Louise Aronson spent 25 years caring for older patients before writing this Pulitzer finalist — part memoir, part manifesto — arguing that America’s medical system is failing its elders and that old age deserves to be treated as a distinct, valuable stage of human life, not a problem to be managed.

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Estrogen Matters

Estrogen Matters

by Avrum Bluming, Carol Tavris · 2023

A powerful corrective to decades of fear around hormone therapy. Presents the science showing estrogen is safe and beneficial for most women. Essential before any HRT decision.

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Face the Change

Face the Change

by Samantha Bryant · 2019

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.

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Friend or Foe

Friend or Foe

by Samantha Bryant · 2017

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.

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Game of Crones

Game of Crones

by Lydia M. Hawke · 2022

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.

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Going Through the Change

Going Through the Change

by Samantha Bryant · 2015

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.

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In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead

In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead

by Susan J. Douglas · 2020

Media scholar Susan J. Douglas examines how women who came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s are now rewriting the script for older womanhood — rejecting the invisibility and passivity assigned to them by culture while honestly confronting the realities of aging. A sociological portrait of a generation refusing to go quietly.

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Iona: A Veil of Time Novel

Iona: A Veil of Time Novel

by Claire R. McDougall · 2026

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.

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Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles

Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles

by Gloria Steinem · 1994

Six long essays taking apart the invented categories of gender and race, including the original Doing Sixty. Written with what one reviewer called cool humour and rich intellect, and notable here for treating age as a political construction rather than a private misfortune.

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Next Level: Your Guide to Kicking Ass, Feeling Great, and Crushing Goals Through Menopause and Beyond

Next Level: Your Guide to Kicking Ass, Feeling Great, and Crushing Goals Through Menopause and Beyond

by Stacy Sims, Selene Yeager · 2022

Dr. Stacy Sims applies her female physiology expertise specifically to the menopausal transition, with training and nutrition protocols designed to maintain strength, power, and athletic performance through and beyond menopause.

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No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History

No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History

by Gail Collins · 2019

Gail Collins surveys three centuries of American history to show that older women have always been more influential, more inventive, and more powerful than the culture acknowledges. From colonial grandmothers to suffragists to modern activists, No Stopping Us Now recovers a hidden history of elder women who refused to step aside.

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Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

by Gloria Steinem · 1983

The collection that made her name, in its third edition with a foreword by Emma Watson. The famous undercover Playboy Bunny exposé is here alongside the essays that argued for a world run “as if women mattered.” Half a million copies since 1983, and the foundation everything later in her work stands on.

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Past Lying

Past Lying

by Val McDermid · 2023

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.

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