We've rounded up 20 great books we think everyone should read by 50

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Reading lists

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

The hilarious, feisty new novel from the internationally bestselling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Flagg is a writer of great warmth and wisdom... A richly imagined family saga

More heart than a shopful of Valentine cards and some absolutely wonderful characters... A warm, funny riff on family and identity

Good fun... Southern manners, indomitable broads, smelling salts and rip-roaring adventure

Overwhelmingly heart-warming. [Flagg’s] talent for storytelling radiates from the page, along with her ability to create quirky characters who are both immensely entertaining and reassuringly human. A thoroughly enjoyable tale of girl power

A light-hearted and humorous read… Fans of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café will also surely be delighted by Flagg’s depiction of small-town southern America.

Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at the age of nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films and the theatre. She is the author of many bestsellers including Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! and A Redbird Christmas. Flagg's script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. She lives in Alabama and California.

The hilarious and heartwarming new novel from the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe 
 
Wisconsin, 1941 – With all the men off to war, Fritzi and her sisters must learn men’s work and the All-Girl Filling Station is born, complete with neat little caps, short skirts, and roller-skates. Their peace doesn’t last long though: skilled women are needed to fly planes for the war effort… 
 
Alabama, 2005 – Mrs Sookie Earle has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to putting her feet up. But then one day a package arrives. Its contents knock Sookie sideways, propelling her back to the 1940s, and four irrepressible sisters whose wartime adventures force them to reimagine who they are, and what they are capable of. 
 
 
‘Flagg is a writer of great warmth and wisdom... A richly imagined family saga’ The Times 
 
‘Wonderful... A warm, funny riff on family and identity' Daily Mail

I Still Dream About You

Part murder mystery, part feel-good comedy, a new novel from Fannie Flagg which bursts with Southern charm and good old-fashioned wisdom.

Fannie Flagg has long perfected a recipe for whimsical tales of the Southern sisterhood

It's clear that Maggie, who grew up in an apartment above a movie theater, deserves a bright Technicolor ending. Readers will root for her to get one

A golden-girl romp every bit as eccentric as it sounds...there is something touching about her plucky, world-weary survivors that has us rooting for them all the way

This deliciously indulgent novel is as charming as Scarlet O'Hara and as comforting as a mug of cocoa

Meet Maggie Fortenberry. Her life seems pretty much perfect - she's beautiful, charming and successful, just as you'd expect of a former Miss Alabama. But in fact, Maggie is perfectly miserable. By now she should have been living in an elegant house with an adoring husband and children. Instead, she makes a living selling that dream to others - though her estate agency business has lately been going from bad to worse. 
 
So Maggie comes up with the perfect plan to end it all. And that's when strange things start happening. As Maggie finds herself catapulted into one surprising discovery after another, she learns valuable lessons about the nature of friendship, the challenges of modern life and the dangers of impossible dreams. She also learns that everybody, dead or alive, has at least one little secret...

Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird

A real novel and a good one...from the busy brain of a born storyteller

In the world of Flagg, plots, situations and outcomes that would normally make you fling a book across the room, here just have you reading on, smiling and hoping

Rediscover the ultimate comfort read in the classic story of friendship, loyalty and secrets set in the deep south of America in the 1930s. 
 
 
The day Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison opened the Whistle Stop Cafe, the town took a turn for the better. It was the Depression and that cafe was a home from home for many of us. You could get eggs, grits, bacon, ham, coffee and a smile for 25 cents. Ruth was just the sweetest girl you ever met. And Idgie? She was a character, all right. You never saw anyone so headstrong. But how anybody could have thought she murdered that man is beyond me. 
 
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a mouth-watering tale of love, laughter and mystery. It will lift your spirits and above all it'll remind you of the secret to life: friends. 
 
‘A richly comic, poignant narrative’ Harper Lee

Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Like A Wonderful Life for our times - unashamedly emotional, full of warmth and quite literally out of this world...

Good, old-fashioned sentimentality... Dialogue and witty asides... [And] aphorisms galore, many so good they make you snort out loud

A warm and funny tribute to small-town America ...quirky Floridian dialogue comes thick and fast

Life is the strangest thing. One minute, Mrs Elner Shimfissle is up a tree, picking figs to make jam, and the next thing she knows, she is off on a strange adventure, running into people she never expected to see again, in the unlikeliest of places. Meanwhile, Elner's highly strung niece Norma takes to her bed, before embarking on a brand new career; Elner's neighbour Verbena turns to the Bible; her truck-driver friend, Luther Griggs, runs his eighteen-wheeler into a ditch; a dark secret emerges from the past - and the entire town is left wondering, 'What's life all about anyway?' Except for Tot Whooten, whose main concern is that the end of the world might come before she can collect her social security. 
 
A plea for honest doubt and humanity in an over-certain world, Can't Wait to Get to Heaven is further proof that Fannie Flagg was put on this earth to write.

Standing In The Rainbow

Another cocktail of Fannie Flagg's humour and poignancy, wit and nostalgia - a fantastic feelgood novel that takes you right to the heart of American life.

Flagg says as much about the human condition through observant comedy as others do through polemic

Poignant and funny, this novel cuts to the heart of small-town America

[A] big, juicy middle-American apple pie of a book, sometimes tart but mostly sweet

Good news for fans of Fried Green Tomatoes... The action does not let up for a minute

The time is 1946-2000. The Place is Elmwood Springs, Missouri. World War II has ended. Neighbour Dorothy broadcasts daily from her front room - to an audience across the state - the antics of her wayward son Bobby and adolescent Anna Lee. It's hard to keep secrets in a community like theirs, but life isn't perfect, and even Neighbour Dorothy has a tragedy as well hidden as it can be. 
 
Into their midst comes the Oatman Family, white Southern Gospel singers who arrive for a pharmaceutical convention, and blow the place away. And then there's Hamm Sparks, a super-salesman everyone likes and trusts; and Charlie Fowler, the poultry king who can see the future in a bucket-to-go; and a wealth of other unforgettable residents. Not to mention the brand new Three Little Pigs Cafeteria, with its pink neon pig casting a glow over the high street and pointing the way to the future...

Welcome To The World Baby Girl

The story of Dena Nordstrom, a young TV interviewer and anchorwoman, moving from small-town Missouri to New York, is a funny and moving novel about the drama and values of everyday life in America.

[Flagg] keeps it simple, she keeps it bright, she keeps it moving right along - and, most of all, she keeps it beloved

Satisfying... [Flagg's] faith in the healing power of small towns and family is refreshing

Sweeping from the gentler confines of late 1940s small town America to the tough side of the New York media circus in the '70s, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! mines golden seams of goodness and gritty determination, prejudice and despair, love and survival, in the story of a young TV interviewer, Dena Nordstrom, whose future looks full of promise, whose present is an emotional mess, and whose past is marked by mystery. 
 
With a cast of unforgettable characters, from the comic masterpiece that is Neighbour Dorothy (broadcasting home tips and good news to the midwest from her own front room) to the monstrosity that is Ira Wallace, TV network head - Fannie Flagg's novel is a funny, constantly surprising novel that keeps you guessing and turing the page right up to the last.

Fannie Flagg

A heart-warming, feel-good festive read

Welcome to the charming town of Lost River – and an enchanting and unforgettable Christmas… 
 
When Oswald moves to the sleepy little town of Lost River he’s not expecting to make friends - but one by one the eccentric inhabitants win his heart. There’s his landlady Betty who’s a force to be reckoned with, Roy who runs the local store and secretly nurses a broken heart, Patsy the little abandoned girl he takes under his wing and, most importantly, Jack the redbird who brings the sort of miracle that can only happen at Christmas... 
 
'A wonderful book ...oozing with goodness and charm... Absurdly satisfying' Guardian 
 
'A born storyteller' New York Times

Fannie Flagg

A Redbird Christmas

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