Can you recommend me a gentle and old fashioned page turner for a 70 year old?

[RoastieToastieReastie]

For a colleague who is in hospital who I know loves to read (so anything too obvious she will likely have read). I know she loves old fashioned type and happily ever after type books. She's read all the classics etc.

I would second most of the books already mentioned.
Having said that,I have a work colleague whose mum is 69 almost 70 and she still runs her own hairdressing business,does Zumba every week and after reading all the Shades of grey books said they were tame!Lol so I suppose it depends on the 70 year old.

Some of the Eva Ibbotsen ones (A Song for Summer, A Company of Swans etc) might be nice too - I think they're technically for teenagers but my grandma really enjoyed them.

I think the colleague may be out of hospital now...

Anything by O.Douglas if you can find them.
She was John Buchan (39 Steps etc) sister and wrote in the 1910s to about the 1930s. Hers are those lovely "gentle" books where, if pushed, you have to say "nothing happens" but they are lovely and an easy read, and just feature ordinary people and their day to day doings.
I love them, but "Taken by the Hand" and "The House That is Our Own" are my favourites - they are proper Comfort Reads

Anything by Barbara Pym.

Bee keeper's Apprentice?

Look out for The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick. Charming in more senses than one. Harold Fry-ish only I preferred this one.

If your colleague is still convalescing at home and in need of some entertaining, non-stimulating reading material then she might do worse than the Fethering Mysteries by Simon Brett. There's about a dozen books centring around Carole, an uptight retired civil servant, and Jude, her next door neighbour a New Agey therapist. Their yin and yang combine with a yen for crime solving on the South Coast. Titles include Death on the Downs and Bones under the Beach Hut.
First published in 2000 - he's written one a year since then. Very easy-going with some wryly amusing, topical asides.

Pom, another o'douglas fan here, but can't get hold of them...don't know taken by the hand. I've always thought that the one about the scots girl who marries the English rich young man but regrets the challenging conversation if the manse is her seeing herself as she might have been had she got married.

And another DE Stevenson fan here too. Never understood why a North Berwick doesn't celebrate her. The Mrs Tim books are funny, though she also does a brilliant line in dreadful women. The sort you want to slap.

On Thirkell, Asa Briggs told me she was the best social chronicler of the period, in his view. A tribute, I thought.

I got mine to complete my collection on eBay Orlanda and they were dirt cheap - I assume because hardly anyone knows about her or wants her books.
The first couple I read, I was given by my great aunt, and actually only took home out of politeness, but then I liked them and looked up the others.
Then I made the whole family go to Peebles on holiday just so I could visit the various places she mentions, and pose for a pic with the Blue Plaque on the wall of their (O. Douglas and John Buchan) childhood home

Eliza for common, that was it.

I love Penny plain!

Any of the school inspector series by Gervase Phinn.

This is published today (7/4/16) and it is a charming read: The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick. Here's my review and I also chat to the author: www.tripfiction.com/novel-set-in-england-and-paris/