Poppyland (32 page)

The Stone family live a seemingly fairy-tale existence, complete with fire pit barbeques and seaside picnics in their idyllic home in rural Norfolk. Nick, Angel and their four children appear to lead a charmed life.

But if everything is so perfect why is Nick away all of the time? Why is every conversation between husband and wife filled with growing silence? And why does their eldest child seem so disillusioned?

We all want a perfect life, but at what price?

Come and Tell Me Some Lies
is Raffaella Barker's enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can't help be anything but.

‘To write well and with such open-hearted affection is an achievement'
Observer

FROM A DISTANCE

In April, 1946, Michael returns on a troopship from the war. In shock, he is caught in a moment at a station, and on impulse, takes the train heading west to Cornwall. In doing so he changes his destiny.

May, 2012, and Kit, a charming stranger, arrives in a coastal Norfolk village to take up his inheritance – a de-commissioned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, but now sweeping it's beam forward through time. Married Luisa falters in the flow of her life – suspended, invisible – as her children begin to fly the nest. When Kit and Luisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of the split-second decision made by Michael all those years ago.

‘I love Raffaella Barker's books – so funny and acerbic' Maggie O'Farrell

www.bloomsbury.com/RaffaellaBarker

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Headline Review

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2008 Raffaella Barker

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Extract from ‘
The Hollow Men
' from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot.
Copyright © 2002 T.S. Eliot Estate. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Extract from ‘
The Invitation
' by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (UK) and HarperCollins Publishers (USA)

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4088 5062 6

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