Penelope Lively

The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-selling author of popular history; lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life still glow in her fading consciousness, but she imagines writing a history of the world. Instead, Moon Tiger is her own history, the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends. At its center -- forever frozen in time, the still point of her turning world -- is the cruelly...

When Dorothy Glover dies, ending her reign of terror, siblings Helen and Edward Daimler, both middle-aged and unmarried, are left ill equipped to move forward and lead their own healthy, independent lives. But as time passes, the two slowly learn to accept what has been lost in their own lives and begin to embrace what can still be retrieved. Writing with both wit and compassion, Lively conjures up Edward and Helen's dilemmas with uncommon sympathy,...

"A glimmering collection of new short fiction from the Booker Prize winner "Lively writes with an astringent blend of sympathy and detachment, emotional wisdom and satiric wit."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In such acclaimed novels as The Photograph, Family Album, and How It All Began, Penelope Lively has captivated readers with her singular blend of wisdom, elegance, and humor. Now, in her first story collection in decades, Lively takes...

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.

The mugging of a retired schoolteacher on a London street has unexpected repercussions for her friends and neighbors when it inadvertently reveals an illicit love affair, leads to a business partnership, and helps an immigrant to reinvent his life.

The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house, Golsoncott. Long after the house was sold out of the family, she begins to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. As her narrative shifts from room to room, object to object, Lively paints a moving portrait of an era of rapid change-and of a family that transformed with the times. Charting the course of the domestic...

"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...

An editor of romance novels goes to a cottage for the summer, taking her daughter and son-in-law. As she pencils scenes of romantic bliss she realizes the son-in-law is cheating on his wife, just as her ex-husband cheated on her. A story with a violent end.