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Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021
Penelope Lively
Claudia Hampton lies dying in hospital. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool, conventional daughter; and Tom, her one great…
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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…
In stock at 2 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 2 shops
A memoir of the author’s life in gardens, and an exploration of gardens in literature.
Presents an acutely observed study of marriage and manipulation. This title tells the story of the dangers of digging up the dark secrets of the past.
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The only child of divorced parents, the author was often sent to stay at her grandparents’ country house Golsoncott. Years later, she began to piece together the lives of those…
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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…
An autobiography is about growing up in Egypt. It is also an investigation into childhood perception in which the author uses herself and her memories as an insight into how…
Pauline is spending the summer at World’s End, a cottage somewhere in the middle of England. This year the adjoining cottage is occupied by her daughter Teresa and baby grandson…
When… Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter Rose cannot accompany her employer Lord Peters to Manchester, which means his niece Marion has to go instead, which means…
The first novel from Penelope Lively, award-winning author of Moon Tiger .
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Rodney Castleden
Rodney Castleden explores the purpose of great prehistoric projects like Avebury and Stonehenge and the nature of the society which built them
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Run by Toby and Paula, the centre offers ordinary people a chance to learn from professional artists skilled in poetry, sculpture, ceramics, and the like. Artists like Greg, the New…
Detached and unwordly paleontologist Howard Beamish is on a journey that is to change his life. Travelling to Nairobi, his plane is forced to land in Marsopolis, the capital of…
Includes fourteen stories that range from the fantasy of Scheherazade to a dazzling example of chaos theory, depicting in exquisite prose the subtle but significant events that go to create…
Stella Brentwood has led an exotic life for a woman of her time. Her best friend at Oxford, Nadine, knew early what she wanted: marriage and children. Stella, too, has…
Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with…
In 1935, privileged misfit Lorna meets the love of her life. Falling for a pennyless and bohemian artist, Matt, she abandons her stuffy Kensington existence in London and moves to…
New from the award-winning author of Moon Tiger comes a masterly crafted exploration of the myriad answers to the question, What if …
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The Booker Prize-winning author of Moon Tiger now offers a rich confrontation with the mystery of London, with the buried lives that make us what we are, and evokes a…
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…
In London’s changing heartland, architect Matthew Halland is aware of how the past and the present blend. It stirs memories of his boyhood, the early years of his daughter Jane…
An exquisite selection of the best short stories from one of our greatest living writers
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…
A novel of family intrigue from one of the most accomplished writers of fiction ( The Washington Post ), Family Album offers a measured, thoughtful look at how events of…
The Booker Prize-winning author’s first novel since The Photograph is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth, and a study of the previous century–its major and minor events, its…
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…
A new collection of short stories from the Man Booker Prize-winning writer
A dream house that is hiding something sinister; two women having lunch who share a husband; an old…
Word count 17,100
Examines alternative destinies, choices and the moments in our lives when we could have chosen a different path. The author takes moments from her own life and asks ‘what if’…
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…
A collection of short stories.
Helen is fifty-two and Edward forty-nine when Dorothy, their mother, dies, ending her reign of terror and leaving them ill-equipped to deal with their lives.
The last thoughts of a dying writer are captured in this intelligent novel by Booker Prize-winner Penelope Lively. The moving and poignant story of life as a writer, historian, and…
Frances, happily married for many years, and suddenly plunged into mourning. Her international celebrity husband Steve has died leaving her unprepared and vulnerable. This title illuminates two terrifying taboos of…
Features meditations on what it is like to be old as well as on how memory shapes us.
With Lively’s signature mastery of narrative and psychology, The Photograph explores a woman’s beauty and its threat to her own happiness, the rivalry of sisters, a marriage in supreme crisis…
Settled into the drowsy village life of Laddenham, where she is playing camp follower to her highly successful husband - clever, agnostic and interested - Clare Paling discovers that small…
The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike.
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…
A respected literary biographer, Mark is working on the life of Gilbert Strong - a writer about whom he thinks he knows everything. Happily married, and apparently dedicated to a…
Lively takes readers on a journey of her familial country house in England, purchased by her grandparents in 1923. As her narrative shifts from room, object to object, she paints…
Pauline is filled with dread at the passion that Teresa has for Maurice. During the long, hot summer, she remembers the way that her possessive passion for Teresa’s father eroded…
Booker Prize-winning author Penelope Lively has written a suspenseful novel about a fiercely independent woman who must finally confront her conflicting needs for solitude and human companionship.
An exquisite selection of the best short stories from one of our best loved writers
Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively’s stories get beneath the everyday to the…
Maria is always getting lost in the secret world of her imagination… A ghostly mystery and winner of the Whitbread Award,republished in the Collins Modern Classics range.
Still dominated by the memories of her late mother, Helen looks back on their lives together, and wonders why only her younger sister, Louise, found the courage to leave and…
This memoir evokes the author’s childhood growing up English in Egypt during the 1930s and 1940s. It follows the young Penelope from a visit to a fellaheen village to an…