A Perfect Life (2006)

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.

Green Grass (2003)

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.

Fuelled by nostalgic memories of summer holidays in Norfolk, Laura thinks that country life will solve all her ills, she'll have "space to breathe", she may even ditch Inigo and his outrageous artistic demands for the man she was going to marry 20 years ago. Guy is now a farmer, who has a sideline in natural bath products. It seems like the ultimate rural idyll, and as far away from the arty London scene as you can get.

Green Grass is gleeful, irreverent and touchingly wistful, a laugh-out-loud account of getting a life.

Summertime (2002)

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.

Written in a clipped diary style, Summertime is packed with moments city dwellers only dream about. Afternoons in the garden of a beautiful Norfolk cottage, impulsive trips to hear nightingales, Easter egg hunts and moonlit nights stuffed with stars. Although they're a privileged lot--the children tell jokes about Beethoven--they're endearing and lovers of Katie Fforde, Mavis Cheek and Joanna Trollope should snap this up. Especially if they're partial to a cheeky parrot with a fruity wolf whistle and a mean sense of rhythm.

Hens Dancing (2000)

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.

Phosphorescence (2005)

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.

Come and Tell Me Some Lies (1994)

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."