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A Stitch in Time
Brief Description
A rediscovered children's classic, winner of the 1976 Whitbread Award, from the Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author of Moon Tiger and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe. Maria likes to be alone with her thoughts. She talks to animals and objects, and generally prefers them to...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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A rediscovered children's classic, winner of the 1976 Whitbread Award, from the Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author of Moon Tiger and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe.
Winner of the Whitbread Award
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Description
A rediscovered children's classic, winner of the 1976 Whitbread Award, from the Booker Prize and Carnegie Medal-winning author of Moon Tiger and The Ghost of Thomas Kempe.
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…
Perfect for fans of mysteries like Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Charlotte Sometimes, and My Friend Walter, A Stitch in Time is a classic of children's literature, from Booker Prize, Whitbread Award, and Carnegie Medal-winning author Penelope Lively.
This new HarperCollins Children's Classics edition features an introduction by Michelle Magorian, author of Goodnight, Mister Tom.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780008778736
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 09 April 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: HarperCollins
Audience: Children
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 16.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 150g
Pages: 224
About the Author
Penelope Lively spent her early childhood in Egypt before coming to England aged twelve. She is an award-winning writer for adults and children, with prizes including the Booker, Whitbread and Carnegie to her name. We are delighted to be publishing A STITCH IN TIME on the Essential Modern Classics list.
Also by Penelope Lively
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A Stitch in Time
Maria is always getting lost in the secret world of her imagination… A ghostly mystery and winner of the Whitbread Award, A Stitch in Time is republished in the Collins Modern Classics range. 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...Paperback$1699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Life in the Garden
Life in the Garden is a memoir of the author's life in gardens and an exploration of gardens in literature. Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens—the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset...Paperback$2600Elsewhere:$2800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Moon Tiger
First time in Modern Classics Claudia Hampton, a beautiful, famous writer, lies dying in hospital. But, as the nurses tend to her with quiet condescension, she is plotting her greatest work—a history of the world ... and in the process, my own. Gradually she re-creates the rich mosaic of her life and times, conjuring up those she has known. There...Paperback$2800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
'A mischievous boy hero and an equally amusing ghoul,’ Guardian An iconic ghost story for children from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there… James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage – with grounds that are great for excavations, and trees...Paperback$1999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Moon Tiger
A stylish reissue of the Booker Prize-winning, Golden Booker Prize-shortlisted classic—now with a new introduction by Elif Shafak. Claudia Hampton—beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world... and in the process, my own'. And it is her story from a childhood just after the First...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Ammonites and Leaping Fish
Now with a new chapter, On Being Ninety—a memoir of ageing, memory, and time, written by one of the twentieth century's greatest writers at the age of eighty. 'The twentieth century shook the world—it sobers me to have been one of those to see it through.' In this powerful and compelling 'view from old age', Penelope Lively, at eighty, reports...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Photograph
A gorgeous novel by the Booker-winning author, now a Penguin Essential. Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's work as a historian should have inured him to unexpected findings and reversals,...PaperbackSold Out -
Metamorphosis
An exquisite selection of the best short stories from one of our best-loved writers. Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled...PaperbackSold Out -
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