Most Popular Books by Penelope Lively

''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.

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.

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.

Six animals set off to sail down river to London. Stanley is unsure what he is and he may be able to find out if he can visit London Zoo.

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.

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 playful spirit of a seventeenth-century sorcerer complicates the life of a mischievous English boy.

A fourteen-year-old girl uses a painted shield from New Guinea to contact various native owners of the shield during different periods of time, and when their presences threaten to materialize in the present, she offers to return the shield to them and lay the ghosts to rest.