Maria is always getting lost in the secret world of her imagination... A ghostly mystery and winner of the Whitbread Award, newly republished in the Essential Modern Classics range. 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...

Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James's Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.Twenty years later, their daughter, Molly, happens upon a forgotten newspaper-a seemingly small moment that leads to her first...

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,...

In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively shares moments in the everyday world that are not always open to observation, as she delves into the minutiae of her characters' lives. Whether she writes about a widow on a visit to Russia, a small boy's consignment to boarding school, or an agoraphobic housewife, Lively takes the reader behind a closed curtain, through the locked door, and into a world that seems at first mundane-then proves to be uniquely memorable....

In The Road to Lichfield, Penelope Lively explores the nature of history and memory as it is embodied in the life of forty-year-old Anne Linton, who comes to her father's aid when he is moved into a nursing home in a distant town. As she shares his last weeks, she unexpectedly learns that her father had a mistress. With this new knowledge, Linton must examine the realities of her own life-of her childhood, her marriage-and ask, what secrets has she...

Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, TV historian Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen. Taken in high summer, many years before, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Worst of all: had Kath planned for him to find out all along? The Photography is a literary, psychologically complex novel of suspense...

"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...

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.