Penelope Fitzgerald

It is March 1913, and the grand old city of Moscow is stirring herself to meet the beginning of spring. But at 22 Lipka Street, Nellie Reed disappears from her home and her husband Frank, suspecting she has returned to England, must raise their three young children with the help of beautiful Lisa Ivanovna.

Set in the small provincial towns between Leipzig and Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century, young and brilliant graduate, Fritz von Hardenburg needs his father's permission to announce his engagement to twelve-year-old Sophie von Kühn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends.

In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop. Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

This collection of Penelope’ Fitzgerald’s reviews, essays and autobiographical pieces includes writing on classic novelists, and contemporary writers (including Anne Enright, Carol Shields, Rose Tremain, and Roddy Doyle) as well as accounts of her schooldays and her childhood in Hampstead.

Set in the 1960's, Maurice, Nenna and Richard all live on houseboats on the Thames at Battersea Reach. Living between land and water they feel as if they belong to neither, and so their lives begin to intertwine. Man Booker Prize Winner.