The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike. 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....

\"Do not open - destroy.\" The words on the envelope he has found are written in Kath\"s hand, but Glyn ignores his wife\"s instruction and breaks the seal. His life unwinds. For he finds a photograph showing Kath holding hands with another man....

Including new and never-before-published stories and forgotten treasures: the definitive selection of short stories from one of our greatest living writers, curated by the author herself Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively\"s stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience....

The definitive selection of short stories from one of our greatest living writers, curated by Penelope Lively herself Wry, compassionate and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively\"s stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience....

Published in Penguin Modern Classics, Penelope Lively\"s Heat Wave is a moving portrayal of a fragile family damaged and defined by adultery, and the lengths to which a mother will go to protect the ones she loves. Pauline is spending the summer at World\"s End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England....

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....

Allersmead is a big shabby Victorian suburban house. The perfect place to grow up for elegant Sandra, difficult Gina, destructive Paul, considerate Katie, clever Roger and flighty Clare. But was it? Now adults, the children return to Allersmead one by one....

How are great turning points in history experienced by individuals? As Britain pulls away from Europe great British writers come together to give voice to their innermost feelings....

No 40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. In the junk room, Clare discovers the vividly painted shield which her great-grandfather, an eminent anthropologist, had brought back from New Guinea. She......

Clare lives with her ancient great-aunts in a rambling old house that has been the family home for generations. One day, Clare discovers an ancient wood carving in the attic. Soon, she begins to dream about the tribe it originally belonged to....

A vibrant new novel from 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....

Winner of the Booker Prize, Penelope Lively\"s Moon Tiger is the tale of a historian confronting her own, personal history, unearthing the passions and pains that have defined her life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Anthony Thwaite. Claudia Hampton, a beautiful, famous writer, lies dying in hospital....

Story-telling is an ingrained habit; I wouldn\"t know what else to do. But the mythology that is intriguing today is that of imagined alternatives. Somehow, choice and contingency have landed you where you are, as the person that you are, and the......

Book DescriptionIn A House Unlocked, Penelope Lively takes us on a journey of her familial country house in England that her grandparents bought in 1923. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, she paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change?and of the family that changed with the times....

Destinies can change in an instant. In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a penniless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to a rustic cottage in Somerset. A baby, Molly, is born, but the coming war takes Matt - and Lorna\'s dreams - away ......