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Mad Mabel

Pages
352
Published
2025
Language
English

Synopsis

Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick lives a quiet suburban life. She is a curmudgeon who minds everyone else's business, and few would guess she has spent decades burying a secret — or that the people in her life have a strange history of coming to a foul end.

When an elderly neighbour is found dead, no one suspects a thing, until Elsie's true identity surfaces: Mad Mabel, the youngest Australian ever convicted of murder, more than sixty years ago. The police start asking questions. The media circles. And a new little girl on the street — talkative, curious, nosy — stops at nothing to befriend her.

Weaving past and present together with Sally Hepworth's trademark twists, humour and heart, Mad Mabel asks whether the past has finally caught up with Mabel, or whether it is time for her to set the record straight.

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About the author

S
Sally Hepworth

Sally Hepworth is the author of Mad Mabel. Readers looking for her work will find her distinctive voice in this book. It's a good place to start if you're new to her writing.

Characters

Elsie Mabel FitzpatrickProtagonist

A prickly, fiercely independent eighty-one-year-old who was once notorious as "Mad Mabel" and has hidden that past for decades.

Joan (Mad Mabel)Antagonist

A litigious, suspicious neighbour on Kenny Lane who digs into Elsie's past.

Elliott WallerAntagonist

Mabel's controlling father, at the centre of the events that shaped her childhood.

Persephone (Mad Mabel)Supporting
Daphne (Mad Mabel)Supporting

A friend from Mabel's childhood who resurfaces in her memories of the past.

All characters in Mad Mabel

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