New Releases by Penelope Fitzgerald

This “classically plotted British mystery” by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Blue Flower is “leavened by a wicked sense of rapier-like humor” (The New York Times Book Review). In The Golden Child, Penelope FitzGerald combines a deft comedy of manners with a tense mystery set in London''s most refined institution: the Museum. When the glittering treasure of ancient Garamantia—the Golden Child—is delivered, the Museum is guaranteed an exhibition as popular as King Tut. But soon a web of intrigue tightens around the Museum’s personnel, especially the hapless junior officer Waring Smith. Then, while prowling the halls one night, Waring is nearly strangled. Two suspicious deaths ensue. And as a murderous conspiracy is traced all the way to the Kremlin, only the cryptic hieroglyphics of the Garamantes can bring an end to the mayhem. Along the way, everyone from art critics to the police and “a few nicely Wodehousian oddballs” fall under Fitzgerald’s mercilessly satirical eye (Kirkus).

Fitzgerald writes a story about the formidable proprietress of "Freddie''s, " the Temple Stage School, which provides child actors for London''s West End theaters, a promising child actor and his rival, and a man with wicked plans to rescue Freddie''s from insolvency.

Man Booker Prize Finalist: This “marvelous novel” about an abandoned husband, set in Moscow a century ago, is “bristling with wry comedy” (Newsday). March 1913. Moscow is stirring herself to meet the beginning of spring. English painter Frank Reid returns from work one night to find that his wife has gone away; no one knows where or why, or whether she’ll ever come back. All Frank knows for sure is that he is now alone and must find someone to care for his three young children. Into Frank’s life comes Lisa Ivanovna, a quiet, calming beauty from the country, untroubled to the point of seeming simple. But is she? And why has Frank’s bookkeeper, Selwyn Crane, gone to such lengths to bring these two together? From a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, this novel, with a new introduction by Andrew Miller, author of Pure, is filled with “writing so precise and lilting it can make you shiver” (Los Angeles Times). “Fitzgerald was the author of several slim, perfect novels. The Blue Flower and The Beginning of Spring both had me abuzz for days the first time I read them. She was curiously perfect.” —Teju Cole, author of Open City

A fictionalized biography of the 18th Century German poet, Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg, who wrote under the nom de plume, Novalis. The novel centers on his philosopy ("My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.") and on his romance with Sophie von Kuhn, 12, who became his muse, but who tied of tuberculosis before they could marry. By the author of The Gates of Angels.

Ce roman relate le grand amour de jeunesse de Fritz von Hardenberg, brillant étudiant en dialectique et mathématiques, plus tard connu sous le nom de Novalis, philosophe et poéte romantique, pour une fillette de douze ans...