In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of its original publication, Carol Shields's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is now available in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition

One of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, this fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett is a subtle but affecting portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life. What transforms this seemingly ordinary tale is the richness of Daisy's vividly described inner life--from her earliest memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death.

For more than...

In Pack of Cards, Penelope Lively introduces the reader to slivers of 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, Penelope Lively takes the reader past the closed curtains, through the locked door, into a world that seems at first mundane and then, at second glance, proves to be uniquely memorable.

"In this haunting new novel, the act of forgetting is as strange and interesting as the power of remembering." --The New York Times Book Review

Look out for Penelope Lively's new book, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.

Penelope Lively is renowned for her signature combination of silken storytelling and nuanced human insights. In Family Album, lively masterfully peels back one family's perfect facade to reveal the unsettling truths.

All Alison ever wanted was to provide her six children with a blissful childhood. Its creation, however,...

A poignant and bittersweet memoir from the distinguished British fiction writer Penelope Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda evokes the author's unusual childhood growing up English in Egypt during the 1930s and 1940s. Filled with the birds, animals and planets of the Nile landscape that the author knew as a child, Oleander, Jacaranda follows the young Penelope from a visit to a fellaheen village to an afternoon at the elegant Gezira Sporting Club, one milieu as exotic to her as the other. Lively's memoir offers us the rare opportunity to accompany a gifted writer on a...

s suspicious as one often is of the other, literature and spirituality enjoy a rich and deep relationship. They have been inextricably linked since narrative and symbol first met in the earliest biblical writings.
Story, poetry and drama have always been used to express the human search for religious meaning and to modulate the divine voice. Equally, 'Take Christianity out of English literature, ' asks Ronald Blythe in this book, 'and what is left?'
In this fascinating and spirited collection of essays the novelist Penelope Lively explores fiction writing as an act of creation with its...

A vibrant new novel from Penelope Lively--a wry, wise story about the surprising ways lives intersect

Look out for Penelope Lively's new book, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.

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;...

A stage adaptation of the 1987 Booker Prize-winning novel, with an introduction by original author Penelope Lively
Claudia Hampton is a popular historian, a strong, beautiful and difficult woman. Now in her seventies, she is plotting her greatest work - a history of the world. She looks back over her life growing up between the wars and remembers the people who have shared its triumphs and tragedies. There is Gordon, her adored brother; Jasper, the charming, untrustworthy lover and father of her daughter, and Tom, her one great love, both found and lost during the El Alamein...