The Hook (22 page)

After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood' by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk. As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother's outrageous wedding. As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.

‘My advice is not to read
Summertime
in public. You'll giggle, you'll snort, you'll make an exhibition of yourself … I loved
Hens Dancing
, and this is better yet'
Country Life

GREEN GRASS

Laura Sale has grown tired of her life. Her daily routine of dividing her time between pandering to the demands of her challenging conceptual artist husband, Inigo and those of their thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, has taken its toll. She longs to remember what makes her happy. A chance encounter with Guy, her first love, is the catalyst she needs, and she swaps North London for the rural idyll she grew up in. In her new Norfolk home Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets, an ungracious goat and a collapsing relationship. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, and she takes control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.

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

A PERFECT LIFE

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

POPPYLAND

On a freezing cold night in an unfamiliar city, a man meets a woman. The encounter lasts just moments, they part barely knowing one another's names, they make no plans to meet again. But both are left breathless.

Five years on they live thousands of miles apart and live totally separate lives, except that they both still think about that night. So when they meet again it seems clear that they will do all they can to try and stay together, but can it be that easy? Will they be able to escape their past? Will they be able to take the risk they know they should?

‘A modern day
Brief Encounter
'
Daily Express

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 1996

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 1996 by Raffaella Barker

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Extract from ‘
Leavin' On Your Mind
' Words & Music by Wayne P. Walker & Webb Pierce © Copyright 1962 PolyGram International Music Publishing Limited, 8 St. James' Square, London SW1. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited. All Rights Reserved.
International Copyright Secured.

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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London
WC1B 3DP

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

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

eISBN: 9781 4088 5072 5

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