New Releases by Penelope Lively

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 journey of exploration into the mysterious world of her own childhood.

A girl''s stuffed animals, Frog, Lion, and Cat, and her doll, Mary Ann, each take her on a different bedtime adventure.

The cat and the crow live under the huge and mysterious banyan tree. All day long they tell each other stories. One day, they decide to tell extra special stories, each of which involves them climbing inside the banyan tree

On a visit to her childhood home a woman recalls the experiences she and her brother had while living there during World War II and especially the reasons they decided to run away.

When positively uncanny things begin happening in the new housing development, Tim and his grandfather realize they must do something to stop them.

Middle-aged biographer Mark Lamming goes to Dorset to meet the grand-daughter of his new subject. His obsession with her changes his life.

Peter''s birthday gift to his grandfather of two strange-looking eggs begins a series of adventures when the eggs hatch into dragons.

Relates the adventures of a variety of creatures--mice, spiders, pill bugs--that live, seen and unseen, in the nooks and crannies of an ordinary house.

Grade level: 4, 5, 6, 7, e, i.

Summary: Three children concoct a witch''s brew that conjures up Morgan Le Fay in the guise of a local tycoon''s wife who immediately stirs up trouble in the village.

Rumor says that the Wild Hunt has been heard again - ghost hounds and antlered horsemen - broughtback by the revival of the ancient Horn Dance in the Somerset village of Hagworthy.

The revival of an ancient dance in an English village stirs up legendary unseen evil spirits which terrify a girl and her friend.

Run by Toby and Paula, the centre offers ordinary people a chance to learn from professional artists skilled in poetry, sculpture, ceramics, and the like. Artists like Greg, the New England poet, whose works are strangely absent; or Bob the lascivious potter who sells his Toby jugs to department stores.

With its feast of characters, moods and settings this collection of stories shows Penelope Lively at her most inventive. The eleven stories offer a wry, gentle, exquisitely observed view of paradise lost. A safe and summery world grows suddenly unreliable. Passion cools. Reality intrudes upon the idyll. Nothing and no one are quite as they appear to be.

Tijdens de opnamen voor een tv-programma over de bekende archeoloog Paxton worden fragmenten uit het leven aan een aantal van zijn vroegere vrienden en medewerkers geschilderd.

Six animals set off to sail down river to London. Stanley is unsure what he is and he may be able to find out if he can visit London Zoo.

The ghost of a seventeenth-century sorcerer emerges as a poltergeist and attempts to make young James his apprentice.