Published Books
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 | Poppyland - (Paperback 2009)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, the man and the woman are living separate lives, thousands of miles apart. But both still think about that night. So if they were to meet again, you’d think, this time, they’d do whatever it took to hold on to each other. But can it be that simple? Or will real life get in the way? |
 | Poppyland - (Hardcover 2008)Ryder James meets Grace Hart the night her exhibition of paintings opens in Copenhagen. Both of them are loners, damaged by tragedy in their lives, both sceptical about love. But they have a connection that can't be broken, which takes them from their separate lives to Norfolk, where they both end up at the same time, bound together by a family event that neither of them knew the other was connected with. Romantic, elegiac, absorbing and quixotic, this love story for difficult people is a testament to the power of attraction. It's about the sea and land, about the past and how it shapes our futures, about how we find the right person to be with - a truly universal story. |
 | What do you do when you should be happy, but you're not? Who do you blame when you realise you don't love your husband any more? What can you change when you see your family is falling apart? What if you had the perfect life... and it turned out to be anything but? Read Raffaella Barker's stunning new novel and find out. |
 | Laura Sale, the star of Raffaella Barker's fifth novel, Green Grass, is pretty fed up. Simply put, Laura has forgotten how to have a good time. "Somewhere on the way to becoming a 38-year-old mother of adolescents, a wife manqué for 14 years, she has left having fun behind." Fun has been overtaken by the preoccupations of work and family. Inigo, her conceptual-artist husband is attractive, but "he's always been demanding and egocentric". Her twins, Dolly and Fred, are mostly loveable--except that Fred is constantly campaigning for a pet and Dolly is behaving "like a temperamental opera diva". There seems no space left for Laura's needs. |
 | The sequel to Raffaella Barker's extremely popular Hens Dancing is a six-month snapshot of the life of Venetia Summers and her three children. Deserted by her "tower-of-strength" boyfriend David, Venetia spends the summer waiting for him to return, lonely and hurt that he seems to be taking his time. Don't be fooled into thinking that she's just going to sit and mope. Although it would be pushing it to describe Summertime as action-packed--too much of the novel takes place on the school run or in the knot garden for that--Venetia's life races along and the months soon skip past. There are three eccentric children to ferry about, the ex-husband and his Internet pet cemetery to contend with and a new neighbour--the elusive Hedley Sale, complete with monobrow and dandruff. |
 | Venetia Summers appears to lead a fairytale existence with her husband and sons in her tumbledown Norfolk cottage. But when her husband walks out on them, not even the arrival of a new baby can make up for the sense of loss she feels. This novel follows Venetia's diaries over the course of a year. "I took Hens Dancing with me on a short trip to the UK and had finished it by the time I reached my hotel. Yes, I was the woman in the plane/train/bus who sat and giggled continuously! I was enchanted by the story but strongly recommend that it is read when alone, behind closed curtains and then you do not embarass yourself!" J.B. |
 | Mystery, mayhem and romance by the sea in a funny, insightful first novel for teenagers from a best-selling adult writer. 14 year-old Lola has spent her whole life in a windswept Norfolk village by the sea. Suddenly she must fit in to a new London school when her parents separate. and the nightmarish experience of her cool city friends invading her old home on a school field trip. Raffaella Barker's first novel for young readers is a delight from start to finish. |
 | Christie Naylor's life is torn apart when her mother dies and her father's crazed reaction is to gamble.
He wins a fish farm in a game of poker and uproots Christie and her brother and sister from their life in the anonymity and safety of suburbia to live on a waterlogged field with a lake full of fish and no friends for miles. Christy falls in love with Mick Fleet, magnetic and overpowering. She knows nothing about him, but plunges into a love affair hoping he will hook her out of her sorrow, and blind to the catastophe hovering close by...... |
 | Barker's upbringing in an old North Norfolk farmhouse is as colourful as a bed of sweet peas. She is the oldest of the five children of poet George Barker and his wife Elspeth, who was 30 years his junior. Some of Raffaella's ten half-siblings were older than her mother. During her teens she often "longed and longed to be normal" and has captured the spirit of her unconventional family in her charming debut novel, Come And Tell Me Some Lies. It was partly George Barker's death in 1991 which prompted Come And Tell Me Some Lies. Someone asked Raffaella whether she would write her father's biography. She declined. "But I realised I wanted to write about the very strong and complicated feelings I had for my family. There was a lot of wanting to speak about my love for him." |
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