Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Astercote | 1970 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 2 | The Whispering Knights | 1971 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 3 | The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy | 1971 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 4 | The Driftway | 1972 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 5 | The Ghost of Thomas Kempe | 1973 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 6 | The House in Norham Gardens | 1974 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 7 | Going Back | 1975 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 8 | A Stitch in Time | 1976 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 9 | The Road to Lichfield | 1977 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 10 | The Voyage of QV66 | 1978 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 11 | Judgment Day | 1980 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 12 | Treasures of Time | 1980 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 13 | The Revenge of Samuel Stokes | 1981 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 14 | Next to Nature, Art | 1982 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 15 | Perfect Happiness | 1983 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 16 | According to Mark | 1984 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 17 | Moon Tiger | 1987 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 18 | City of the Mind | 1988 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 19 | Passing On | 1989 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 20 | Cleopatra’s Sister | 1993 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 21 | Heat Wave | 1996 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 22 | Spiderweb | 1998 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 23 | A House Unlocked | 2001 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 24 | The Photograph | 2003 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 25 | Making it Up | 2005 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 26 | Consequences | 2007 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 27 | Family Album | 2009 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
| 28 | How It All Began | 2011 | Penelope Lively | Buy |
Penelope Lively’s standalone novels span both children’s and adult fiction, published across five decades. Her children’s novels include Astercote (1970), The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973), and A Stitch in Time (1976), all of which explore how the past lingers in places and objects. Her adult fiction began with The Road to Lichfield (1977), a Booker-shortlisted novel about a woman discovering her late father’s secrets.
Moon Tiger (1987), her best-known work, won the Booker Prize. It follows Claudia Hampton, a dying historian who sets out to write a history of the world as she remembers it, moving between wartime Egypt and modern England. Later novels like City of the Mind (1988), Cleopatra’s Sister (1993), and How It All Began (2011) continued to examine memory, coincidence, and the interplay of past and present. Her standalone novels for both children and adults share a fascination with how history embeds itself in everyday life.