New Releases by Penelope Lively

A rediscovered children''s classic, winner of the 1976 Whitbread Award, from the Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author of Moon Tiger and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. Maria likes to be alone with her thoughts. She talks to animals and objects, and generally prefers them to people. But whilst on holiday she begins to hear things that aren''t there - a swing creaking, a dog barking - and when she sees a Victorian embroidered picture, Maria feels a strange connection with the ten-year-old, Harriet, who stitched it. But what happened to her? As Maria becomes more lost in Harriet''s world, she grows convinced that something tragic occurred... Perfect for fans of mysteries like Tom''s Midnight Garden, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Charlotte Sometimes, and My Friend Walter, A Stitch in Time is a classic of children''s literature, from Booker Prize, Whitbread Award, and Carnegie Medal-winning author Penelope Lively. This new HarperCollins Children''s Classics edition features an introduction by Michelle Magorian, author of Goodnight, Mister Tom.

''A mischievous boy hero and an equally amusing ghoul,'' Guardian An iconic ghost story for children from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction. Just because you can''t see them doesn''t mean they aren''t there... James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage - with grounds that are great for excavations, and trees that are perfect for climbing - and stuff is happening. Stuff that is normally the kind of thing he does. But it''s not him who''s writing strange things on shopping lists and fences. It''s not him who smashes bottles and pours tea in the Vicar''s lap. It''s a ghost - honestly. Thomas Kempe the 17th century apothecary has returned and he wants James to be his apprentice. No one else believes in ghosts. It''s up to James to get rid of him. Or he''ll have no pocket money or pudding ever again. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a timeless thriller, with a ghostly mystery and all the fun and mischief of being nine years old. Perfect for fans of Eva Ibbotson, Tom''s Midnight Garden and Helen Cresswell''s Moondial.

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."

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.

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 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.

«Un romanzo d’amore in cui i protagonisti dividono la scena con le acute riflessioni dell’autrice sulla storia e sul destino... Un libro di grande fascino.» The New York Times Book Review su La sorella di Cleopatra «Una storia d’amore meravigliosa.» The Observer su La sorella di Cleopatra «Un romanzo appassionante e acuto, una scrittura tra le più eleganti che ci siano.» The Wall Street Journal su La sorella di Cleopatra Howard Beamish, paleontologo di fama internazionale, e Lucy Faulkner, combattiva giornalista freelance, entrambi professionisti di successo ma con alle spalle relazioni fallite e insoddisfacenti, si ritrovano per caso sullo stesso volo in partenza per Nairobi. All’improvviso, per un supposto problema ai motori, l’aereo viene dirottato e costretto ad atterrare in Callimbia, una misteriosa nazione africana situata tra l’Egitto e la Libia, dove Berenice, la sorella di Cleopatra, secondo la leggenda avrebbe tentato di sedurre Antonio. Dimenticati i fasti dell’antichità, il paese è ora governato da un dittatore e sconvolto da una sanguinosa rivoluzione interna. Comincia così l’odissea dei viaggiatori che, ignari del vero motivo di tanto trambusto, si ritrovano prigionieri dei militari. Sarà proprio questa situazione di difficoltà e incertezza a offrire a Howard e Lucy l’occasione di un incontro autentico, che a entrambi servirà per tracciare un bilancio della propria esistenza. E nel cuore di un paese scosso da una dittatura violenta, nel dramma della segregazione, nascerà un’intesa che cambierà la loro vita. «Penelope Lively sa cogliere perfettamente ciò che si nasconde sotto la superficie della vita delle persone.» The Scotsman «Penelope Lively scrive così bene, assaporando ogni singola parola.» The Daily Telegraph «Penelope Lively si conferma bravissima, capace di emozioni forti, durature, pervasive, nonostante la scrittura elegantissima.» D di Repubblica

This is not quite a memoir. Rather, it is the view from old age. And a view of old age itself, this place at which we arrive with a certain surprise - ambushed, or so it can seem. One of the few advantages of age is that you can report on it with a certain authority; you are a native now, and know what goes on here. In this charming but powerful memoir, Penelope Lively reports from beyond the horizon of old age. She describes what old age feels like for those who have arrived there and considers the implications of this new demographic. She looks at the context of a life and times, the history and archaeology that is actually being made as we live out our lives in real time, in her case World War II; post war penny-pinching Britain; the Suez crisis; the Cold War and up to the present day. She examines the tricks and truths of memory. She looks back over a lifetime of reading and writing. And finally she looks at her identifying cargo of possessions - two ammonites, a cat, a pair of American ducks and a leaping fish sherd, amongst others. This is an elegant, moving and deeply enjoyable memoir by one of our most loved writers.

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.

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).

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.

"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.

"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.

Elle avait soixante-cinq ans, apparemment. Ce chiffre fatidique l''avait amenée à s''installer à la campagne. Elle qui avait passé tant de temps à noter et à interpréter des rites de passage compliqués dans des sociétés étrangères se trouvait maintenant elle-même soumise à une des règles implacables de son propre pays : arrêter de travailler, vieillir... Mais elle était aussi libre de choisir son mode de vie, d''agir à sa guise. Elle avait des projets. Stella n''est en effet pas femme à se contenter de faire des bilans. Elle qui a beaucoup voyagé, beaucoup travaillé, éprouve brusquement le besoin de se trouver des racines. Elle achète un cottage entouré d''un jardin, une voiture, un chien et ainsi équipée part à la découverte d''une nouvelle vie. Mais elle va peu à peu découvrir que ce qui se passe dans la bucolique campagne anglaise n''a parfois rien à envier à ce qu''elle a pu voir ou entendre dans des peuplades dites sauvages...

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.

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

Fourteen stories on relations between men and women. In one story, an estranged couple find common cause in their dislike of their marriage counsellor, in another, a wife patiently waits for the right moment to reveal to her husband she knows of his infidelity.

" Chacun garda les yeux fixés sur la porte. Un homme fit alors son apparition, un civil vêtu d''un costume gris immaculé avec une chemise blanche... Les passagers du vol CAP 500, sales, échevelés, les yeux rougis par l''épuisement, rivèrent sur lui leurs regards pleins de morosité. " Mesdames et Messieurs, bonsoir. J''ai reçu du gouvernement de la Calimbie la mission de vous souhaiter la bienvenue. Nous nous trouvons malheureusement dans la nécessité de différer encore quelque peu votre départ en raison des troubles qui persistent dan notre pays .... " La vérité, c''est que les infortunés passagers du vol qui se rendaient à Nairobi sont retenus en otages en Calimbie, où un incident technique a contraint leur appareil à se poser. Que va-t-il se passer pendant ces longues journées d''attente, d''incertitude et d''angoisse ? L''étrange histoire de la Calimbie, pays d''Afrique où aurait régné autrefois la sœur de Cléopâtre, et le passé encore plus bizarre du dictateur qui la gouverne auront-ils une influence sur le cours des évènements ?

The cat and the crow live under the huge and mysterious banyan tree. All day long they tell each other stories. One day, they decide to tell extra special stories, each of which involves them climbing inside the banyan tree

The lives of a palaeontologist and a journalist are woven together when their plane makes an emergency landing at Callimbia, city of Queen Berenice, the sister and rival of the fabled Cleopatra.

Resum: El Núm. 40 de Norham Gardens és el domicili de Clare Mayfield, una noia de catorze anys, de les seves dos ties i de dos llogaters. La casa, una gran mansió victoriana, és com un museu vivent. La Clare descobreix a les golfes un escut que el besavi, antropòleg, va dur de Nova Guinea. La noia s''obssesiona en el passat de l''objecte i decideix de saber més coses sobre l''origen tribal d''aquest.

Peter''s birthday gift to his grandfather of two strange-looking eggs begins a series of adventures when the eggs hatch into dragons.