
A Stitch in Time
Collins Modern Classics
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $20.32
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lucy Scott
-
By:
-
Penelope Lively
About this listen
Maria is always getting lost in the secret world of her imagination…
A ghostly mystery and winner of the Whitbread Award,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 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 ghostly mysteries like ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’.
©2011 Penelope Lively (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
-
Moon Tiger
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
-
-
stunning beauty
- By philip carr harris on 03-31-19
By: Penelope Lively
-
Life in the Garden
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Heather Lloyd
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. Now in her 84th year, Lively writes, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."
-
-
Enjoyable Read
- By Figgs on 03-31-21
By: Penelope Lively
-
Consequences
- A Novel
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James' Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.
-
-
Lovely book but not a classic
- By KathrynVB on 10-16-14
By: Penelope Lively
-
Family Album
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her 16th novel, Penelope Lively shows her extraordinary understanding of what makes us human as she delves into the mystery of family life.
-
-
Our Family Members We Have Not Known
- By P. Carson on 07-10-10
By: Penelope Lively
-
Saffy's Angel
- By: Hilary McKay
- Narrated by: Julia Sawalha
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saffron's two sisters, Cadmium and Rose, and her brother Indigo were all named from a color chart by their mother Eve, a fine-arts painter. When Saffron, known as Saffy, discovers that her name is not on the chart, it soon leads to another discovery. She has been adopted.
-
-
I love this narrator
- By Genny Peter195 on 04-24-24
By: Hilary McKay
-
The Fortnight in September
- By: R.C. Sherriff
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet the Stevens family as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guesthouse and follow the same carefully honed schedule - now accompanied by their three children, 20-year-old Mary, 17-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie.
-
-
life-affirming and magical
- By Victoria on 11-23-21
By: R.C. Sherriff
-
Moon Tiger
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elderly, uncompromising Claudia Hampton lies in a London hospital bed with memories of life fluttering through her fading consciousness. An author of popular history, Claudia proclaims she's carrying out her last project: a history of the world. This history turns out to be a mosaic of her life, her own story tangled with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the center of her life, Tom, her one great love found and lost in war-torn Egypt.
-
-
stunning beauty
- By philip carr harris on 03-31-19
By: Penelope Lively
-
Life in the Garden
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Heather Lloyd
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. Now in her 84th year, Lively writes, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."
-
-
Enjoyable Read
- By Figgs on 03-31-21
By: Penelope Lively
-
Consequences
- A Novel
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Consequences is a love-story-times-three that opens on the eve of the Second World War, with a chance meeting in St. James' Park, London. Wholly in love, Lorna and Matt leave the city for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together is shattered when the war begins and by Matt's tragic death in action.
-
-
Lovely book but not a classic
- By KathrynVB on 10-16-14
By: Penelope Lively
-
Family Album
- By: Penelope Lively
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her 16th novel, Penelope Lively shows her extraordinary understanding of what makes us human as she delves into the mystery of family life.
-
-
Our Family Members We Have Not Known
- By P. Carson on 07-10-10
By: Penelope Lively
-
Saffy's Angel
- By: Hilary McKay
- Narrated by: Julia Sawalha
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saffron's two sisters, Cadmium and Rose, and her brother Indigo were all named from a color chart by their mother Eve, a fine-arts painter. When Saffron, known as Saffy, discovers that her name is not on the chart, it soon leads to another discovery. She has been adopted.
-
-
I love this narrator
- By Genny Peter195 on 04-24-24
By: Hilary McKay
-
The Fortnight in September
- By: R.C. Sherriff
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet the Stevens family as they prepare to embark on their yearly holiday to the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens first made the trip to Bognor Regis on their honeymoon, and the tradition has continued ever since. They stay in the same guesthouse and follow the same carefully honed schedule - now accompanied by their three children, 20-year-old Mary, 17-year-old Dick, and little brother Ernie.
-
-
life-affirming and magical
- By Victoria on 11-23-21
By: R.C. Sherriff
-
Barbara Pym: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
- Some Tame Gazelle, No Fond Return of Love, Crampton Hodnet & More
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Miriam Margolyes, Hannah Gordon, Samantha Bond, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Barbara Pym is one of the 20th-century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in the Times Literary Supplement. Her seventh novel was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and writers from Jilly Cooper to Alexander McCall Smith continue to laud her talent today.
-
-
A Wonderful Find
- By Martha Alston on 05-24-22
By: Barbara Pym
-
Echo
- By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Mark Bramhall, David deVries, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audie Award, Middle Grade, 2016. Lost and alone in the forbidden Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each become sinterwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives, binding them by an invisible thread of destiny. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together.
-
-
One of the best audio productions I have heard
- By tru britty on 07-28-15
By: Pam Muñoz Ryan
-
The Shell Seekers
- By: Rosamunde Pilcher
- Narrated by: Hayley Atwell
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of a long and useful life, Penelope Keeling's prized possession is The Shell Seekers, painted by her father, and symbolizing her unconventional life, from bohemian childhood to wartime romance. When her grown children learn their grandfather's work is now worth a fortune, each has an idea as to what Penelope should do. But as she recalls the passions, tragedies, and secrets of her life, she knows there is only one answer...and it lies in her heart.
-
-
Narrator Speed
- By TB on 01-18-18
-
Coming Home
- By: Rosamunde Pilcher
- Narrated by: Helen Johns
- Length: 40 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this captivating story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home.... In 1935, Judith Dunbar is left behind at a British boarding school when her mother and baby sister go off to join her father in Singapore.
-
-
Marvelous story line, Excellent narration
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-18
-
The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir
- By: Lesley Allen
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Biddy Weir is a quirky girl. Abandoned by her mother as a baby, and with a father who's not quite equipped for the challenges of modern parenting, Biddy lives in her own little world, happy to pass her time painting by the sea and watching the birds go by. That is, until she meets Alison Flemming. Because there are a few things about Biddy that aren't normal, you see. And Alison isn't afraid to point them out to the world. All of a sudden, Biddy's quiet life is thrown into turmoil. If only there was someone to convince her that, actually, everyone's a little bit weird....
-
-
The Lonely Life Of Biddy Weir
- By George Criticos on 08-10-20
By: Lesley Allen
-
The Orphan House
- Absolutely Gripping and Heartbreaking Historical Fiction
- By: Ann Bennett
- Narrated by: Naomi Frederick
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarah Jennings knows there’s one place she can go to find some peace and quiet during her difficult divorce. But arriving at her beloved father’s home in the countryside, she finds him unwell and hunched over boxes of files, studying the records from Cedar Hall, the crumbling orphanage in town. He says that hidden behind the wrought iron gates and overgrown ivy are secrets about their family, and he asks for her help.
-
-
The Orphan House
- By Sylvia Sue Wilson on 04-22-20
By: Ann Bennett
-
Winter Solstice
- By: Rosamunde Pilcher
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Rosamunde Pilcher, Winter Solstice (the basis for the TV movie) is the story of five unforgettable characters, lonely and haunted strangers who find love and loyalty as a reborn family of friends during the Christmas holidays.
-
-
An absolute joy!
- By Amazon Customer on 05-24-19
-
We Must Be Brave
- By: Frances Liardet
- Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle, Juliet Mills
- Length: 16 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
December 1940. As German bombs fall on Southampton, England, the city's residents flee to the surrounding villages. In Upton village, amid the chaos, newly married Ellen Parr finds a girl asleep, unclaimed at the back of an empty bus. Little Pamela, it seems, is entirely alone. Ellen has always believed she does not want children, but when she takes Pamela into her home, the child cracks open the past Ellen thought she had escaped and the future she and her husband, Selwyn, had dreamed for themselves. As the war rages on, love grows where it was least expected, surprising them all.
-
-
Nasty reviews, why? Beautiful book.
- By Kelly on 11-27-19
By: Frances Liardet
-
The Shadowy Horses
- By: Susanna Kearsley
- Narrated by: Sally Armstrong
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it - not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.
-
-
Slow Build Atmospheric Story of Light Rom Susp
- By Sophia Rose on 12-15-16
By: Susanna Kearsley
-
September
- By: Rosamunde Pilcher
- Narrated by: Jilly Bond
- Length: 20 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A place you will never forget. Rosamunde Pilcher's Scotland...where the fields flourish with greenery, the bills bloom with purple, and the lochs glitter with the bright blue of the sky. A time you will never forget. September...when the heather is in full flower, the first chill of autumn cools the air, and the countryside stirs with the hunt, balls, dinner parties, and dance. Rosamunde Pilcher's September...a story of homecomings and heartbreaks, friendships, betrayals, forgiveness, and love.
-
-
An old and much loved favorite
- By Jeanette Finan on 12-31-17
-
Gone-Away Lake
- By: Elizabeth Enright
- Narrated by: Colleen Delany
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleven year-old Portia and her younger brother, Foster, spend a summer with their cousin, Julian, engaged in more than the usual summer pastimes of sun, fun and games. The children discover a fascinating abandoned summer resort, consisting of deserted crumbling Victorian summer homes surrounding a vanished lake, which is now a swamp. But, best of all, they discover and befriend an elderly eccentric brother and sister who tell them the story of Gone-Away Lake.
-
-
Great Summer Read
- By Donna on 07-25-06
-
Spring Magic
- By: D. E. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Lesley Mackie
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Frances Field arrives in a scenic coastal village in Scotland, having escaped her dreary life as an orphan, treated as little more than a servant by an uncle and aunt. Once there, she encounters an array of eccentric locals, the occasional roar of enemy planes overhead and three army wives - Elise, Tommy and Tillie - who become fast friends. Elise warns Frances of the discomforts of military life, but she’s inclined to disregard the advice when she meets the dashing and charming Captain Guy Tarlatan.
-
-
WWII Home Front
- By Jerri C on 06-05-19
By: D. E. Stevenson
Critic reviews
"Gentle and humorous with a touch of mystery.” (Michelle Magorian, best-selling author of Goodnight, Mister Tom)