Most Popular Books by Penelope LIVELY

The purple swamp hen -- Abroad -- The row -- Who do you think you were? -- Old as the hills -- A biography -- The weekend -- License to kill -- Mrs. Bennet -- Lorna and Tom -- Point of view -- DIY -- The bridge -- Theory of mind -- The third wife.

Two children are left to face the ramifications of the emotional hold their mother had on their lives for many years, and learn to accept what has therefore been lost.

"Judgment Day" takes readers into the life of Clare Paling, who has just moved with her family to Laddenham, a seemingly drowsy village enlivened by sideshows of adultery and gossip. With flawless precision, Lively brings the village and its inhabitants to life as an unpardonable death reminds them all that the world is a very uncertain place.

A vibrant novel from Booker Prize winner Penelope Lively—a wry, wise story about the surprising ways lives intersect When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message; a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true; an old-guard historian tries to recapture his youthful vigor with an ill-conceived idea for a TV miniseries; and a middle-aged central European immigrant learns to speak English and reinvents his life with the assistance of some new friends. In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed. Funny, humane, touching, sly and sympathetic, How It All Began is a brilliant sleight of hand from an author at the top of her game.

From the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author, reflections on gardening, art, literature, and life Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. "Her body of work proves that certain themes never go out of fashion," writes the New York Times Book Review, as true of this beautiful volume as of the rest of the Lively canon. Now in her eighty-fourth year, Lively muses, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."

En forfatter, som skriver på en biografi over en berømt engelsk litterat, forelsker sig hovedkulds i hans barnebarn, men vender efter en kort hektisk sommer tilbage til sit trygge ægteskab

Penelope Lively''s Booker Prize winning classic, Moon Tiger is a haunting story of loss and desire, published here as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Claudia Hampton - beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a ''history of the world . . . and in the process, my own''. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. But Claudia''s life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her, loved her, the chance to speak, to put across their point of view. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter; and then there is Tom, her one great love, found and lost in wartime Egypt. ''Leaves its traces in the air long after you''ve put it away'' Anne Tyler ''A complex tapestry of great subtlety. Lively writes so well, savouring the words as she goes'' Daily Telegraph ''Very clever: evocative, thought-provoking and hangs on the mind long after it is finished'' Literary Review

The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike.When James'' family moves to a ancient cottage in Oxfordshire (with grounds that are great for excavations and trees that are perfect for climbing), it doesn''t take long for odd things to stard happening. Doors crash open and strange signs appear, written in an archaic hand. James soon discovers the culprit: a ghost! It''s the spirit of Thomas Kempe, a 17th century apothecary who wants James to be his apprentice. The problem? No one else believes in ghosts. It''s up to James to get rid of him... An iconic ghost story for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is adored by generations of readers.

A love story that connects the lives of three generations, Lorna and Matt who experience heartache during World War II, their daughter Molly, and their granddaughter Ruth, who begins a journey that takes her back to 1941.

A "well crafted . . . fascinating" story of a London architect''s struggle for identity in love and career ( Time Out). This is the city in which everything is simultaneous. There is no yesterday, nor tomorrow, merely weather, and decay, and construction. In London''s changing heartland, architect Matthew Halland can''t help but contemplate how the past and the present blend. It stirs memories of his boyhood, the early years with his daughter, and the failed marriage he has not yet put behind him. Here, too, is the London of prehistory, of Georgian elegance, of the Blitz. But at the same time, Matthew must keep focused on the constructing of a new future for London—his latest project in Docklands—and with it he begins to forge new beginnings of his own. City of the Mind is the "lucid and complex, meditative and playful, concise and expansive" second novel from the Man Booker Prize–winning author ( The Washington Post Book World).

When the BBC plans a programme on the dig which made archaeologist Hugh Paxton famous, a host of memories are disinterred, and lives disrupted. Kate adored her father and considers the TV scheme an intrusion. Laura Paxton, lonely and bored, is delighted at the prospect of being seen as the charming widow of a distinguished scholar. A cynical on-looker to the filming is Tom Rider, Kate''s fiance. While completing his thesis on an 18th century antiquarian, Tom observes the perplexities of being English and the parasitism of making a living out of the past. For Paxton''s family and colleagues, the site, a Neolithic barrow, becomes the focus for recollections as selective as the filming which will in turn distort the Wiltshire scenery.

"Nobody writes more astutely or affectingly about [love]... than Penelope Lively." -- The Washington Post An intelligent examination of alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path, from Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively In this fascinating piece of fiction, Penelope Lively takes moments from her own life and asks ''what if'' she had made other choices: what if she hadn''t escaped from Alexandria at the outbreak of WWII? What would her life have been like if she had become pregnant when she was 18? If she had married someone else? If she taken a different job? If she had lived her life abroad? These stories offer a sublime dance between realityand imaganation, inviting the reader to ask similar questions.

Set in Framleigh Creative Study Centre where eleven people are in residence to fulfil their artistic potential. When they find themselves without any domestic staff, their dreams of creative bliss are overcome by everyday life again.

The beloved and bestselling author takes an intimate look back at a life of reading and writing “The memory that we live with . . . is the moth-eaten version of our own past that each of us carries around, depends on. It is our ID; this is how we know who we are and where we have been.” Memory and history have been Penelope Lively’s terrain in fiction over a career that has spanned five decades. But she has only rarely given readers a glimpse into her influences and formative years. Dancing Fish and Ammonites traces the arc of Lively’s life, stretching from her early childhood in Cairo to boarding school in England to the sweeping social changes of Britain’s twentieth century. She reflects on her early love of archeology, the fragments of the ancients that have accompanied her journey—including a sherd of Egyptian ceramic depicting dancing fish and ammonites found years ago on a Dorset beach. She also writes insightfully about aging and what life looks like from where she now stands.

The Road to Lichfield is the Booker Prize shortlisted first novel by Penelope Lively. Ann Linton leaves her family in Berkshire and sets up camp in her father''s house when he is taken into a nursing home in distant Lichfield. As she shares his last weeks she meets David Fielding, and the love they share brings her feelings into sharp focus. Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, and a future never fully anticipated. ''A searing study of the peculiar state of being in love . . . there are few contemporary novelists to match her on this subject'' Sunday Telegraph

A collection of 14 short stories, ranging from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory.

Claudia, a best-selling writer, recalls her life of adventure as a newspaper correspondent, novelist, lover, and mother, while the people close to her file past her hospital bed.

Three children concoct a witch''s brew that conjures up Morgan Le Fay in the guise of a local tycoon''s wife who immediately stirs up trouble in the village.