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.

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. A marriage unravels after an illicit love affair is revealed through an errant cell phone message; a posh yet financially strapped interior designer meets a business partner who might prove too good to be true; an old-guard historian tries to recapture his youthful vigor with an ill-conceived idea for a TV miniseries; and a middle-aged central European immigrant learns to speak English and reinvents his life with the assistance of some new friends. Through a richly conceived and colorful cast of characters, Penelope Lively explores the powerful role of chance in people's lives and deftly illustrates how our paths can be altered irrevocably by someone we will never even meet. Brought to life in her hallmark graceful prose and full of keen insights into human nature, "How It All Began" is an engaging, contemporary tale that is sure to strike a chord with her legion of loyal fans as well as new readers. A writer of rare wisdom, elegance, and humor, Lively is a consummate storyteller whose gifts are on full display in this masterful work.

A quiet lonely child spending her holidays by the sea is changed by an inexplicable link with people and events of one hundred years ago and also by the very real and lively family next door.

Product Description: A novel of family intrigue from "one of the most accomplished writers of fiction of our day" (The Washington Post)All Alison ever wanted was a blissful childhood for her six children, with summers at the beach and birthday parties on the lawn at their family home...read more

Product Description: All Alison ever wanted was a blissful childhood for her six children, with summers at the beach and birthday parties on the lawn at their family home. Together with Ingrid, the family au pair, she has worked hard to create a real "old-fashioned family life...read more

A love story that connects the lives of three generations, Lorna and Matt who experience heartache during World War II, their daughter Molly, and their granddaughter Ruth, who begins a journey that takes her back to 1941.

A love story that connects the lives of three generations, Lorna and Matt who experience heartache during World War II, their daughter Molly, and their granddaughter Ruth, who begins a journey that takes her back to 1941.

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 job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her but whom she does not love. But it is her own daughter, Ruth, who begins the journey that will take her back to 1941-and a redefinition of herself and of love.Told in Lively's incomparable prose, Consequences is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth and a study of the previous century-its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness, and its changing of lives.

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 job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her but whom she does not love. But it is her own daughter, Ruth, who begins the journey that will take her back to 1941-and a redefinition of herself and of love.Told in Lively's incomparable prose, Consequences is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth and a study of the previous century-its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness, and its changing of lives.

Aeneas, son of Venus, leaves his ruined city of Troy in an attempt to find a new home for his people and faces enormous dangers along the way, such as giants, monsters, and a trip to the Underworld.

Ancient Egypt has gripped the imagination like no other country and the lure of its pyramids and the Nile act as a magnet for visitors from all over the world. Spanning the entire history of Egypt, starting from the origins of prehistory, this book talks about its major controversies and also gives an understanding of contemporary Egypt.

Finding a mysterious photograph of his late wife, Kath, holding hands with another man, Glyn begins a search that proves shocking to Kath's family and friends.

Product Description: Penelope Lively is a grande dame of British letters whose novels have attracted readers of Ian McEwan and Iris Murdoch-as well as those enthralled by her insight into relationships and family. The Photograph brings her talents into a whole new page-turning realm...read more

A tale based on the author's own life considers what might have happened had she made other choices or experienced different outcomes at pivotal moments, considering such fictional turns of events as her family's failure to escape from Egypt during World War II, an unplanned teen pregnancy, and a marriage to another person. By the author of Moon Tiger. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

Provides youngsters an introduction to daily life in the time of the poet Virgil, and an explanation of the meaning of his famous work on the creation of Rome, defining special vocabulary, with notes and a study guide.

Product Description: Running away from their home and their stepmother, Paul and his sister travel along the Driftway, a road that runs from Banbury to Northampton. For those that can hear them, messages can be picked up along this road from people who passed by long ago and had an experience of joy or sorrow...read more

Product Description: No.40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. The house is a huge Victorian monstrosity, with rooms all full of old furniture, old papers, old clothes, memorabilia - it is like a living museum...read more

Retells the classic story of a family of bears who return from a walk to find an unexpected visitor in their house.

Haunted by London's past, present, and future, architect Matthew Halland relies on his daughter, Jane, and his new love, Sarah, to keep him sane in a monstrous urban environment. Reprint.