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 tragic occurred…
Penelope Lively is a widely translated novelist, short story writer and author of children’s books. Her novels have won several literary awards, including the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger in 1987. The Road to Lichfield and According to Mark were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Her children’s book The Ghost of Thomas Kempe was awarded the Carnegie Medal in 1973, and A Stitch in Time (1976) won the Whitbread Award. Family Album was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010.
Penelope is a former Chairman of the Society of Authors and has been a member of the Boards of the British Library and the British Council. She is an Hon. D. Litt of Tufts University, Mass. U.S.A. and of Warwick University and an Hon. Fellow of the University of Swansea.
She was awarded the OBE in 1989, the CBE in 2001 and the DBE in 2012.
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UK Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2026 (originally published in 1976)
Primary Agent: Lizzy Kremer
Film/TV Agent: DHA (Georgie Smith)
Extent: 36,000 words, 224 pages
Co-agents: Chinese: Bardon Chinese Media; Japanese: Tuttle Mori
Rights sold: Chinese Simplified - ****Shanghai Cai Qin Ren Culture Diffusion; Italian - Ugo Guanda
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