novels
The Perfect Lie
A girl flees to Venice to escape her dangerous past in this electrifying novel of intrigue, psychological tension and suspense…
For Lucy Riddick, Venice has always been the dream destination. A dream inspired by the pretty picture pinned to her mother’s kitchen wall. To Lucy, Venice seems the ideal place to lose herself. And now she needs to do just that. The secret she’s been keeping from her boyfriend and her friends has finally caught up with her and Lucy needs to disappear – and fast. There’s no better time to pack her bags and head for Italy. But what if, when she sets foot in Venice, Lucy finds that the one thing she has been running from, the one thing she has been trying to escape, is already there, lying in wait for her? Time to run away again? Or time to end the chase, once and for all?
The Life You Want
Tansy feels trapped in her marriage to Max, and the looks she receives from parents in the playground suggest she’s not doing a great job at being a mother to her two sons either. So Tansy decides to take a trip to India, to visit an old friend and sort her head out. But life is about to get a whole lot more complicated, and as she uncovers a shocking secret she begins to long for the normality of family life.
A fab sequel to Emily’s first novel, Backpack – Closer
Barr has come up with the goods again in this novel: it’s a buzzy, exciting work that refuses to bow to convention – Sunday Express
The Sisterhood
We all have a dark side… Elizabeth Greene is devastated when her boyfriend of ten years leaves her for someone else. After a night of drowning her sorrows leads to an unexpected one-night stand, Elizabeth finds herself pregnant, alone and vulnerable. Helen has just discovered she has a sister she didn’t know she had. Bored with her privileged life in France and driven by a need to gain her parents’ approval, Helen sets out to find her sister and reunite her with her long-lost mother. When her search leads her to Elizabeth the two women become closely linked. But their connection to one another is founded on a dark deception, with the truth having extreme consequences…
Packed with suspense and heated. Barr is quite the modern day Muriel Spark – Daily Mirror
A great twist on Single White Female – Eve Magazine
This is one brilliantly compelling page-turner – Closer
Out of my Depth
When Susie decides to invite her old school friends for a reunion she tells herself that it’s just about showing off. It’s about letting Amanda, Izzy and Tamsin, see how well she’s done, with her successful career as an artist, her gorgeous house in France, her deliciously louche boyfriend. But the truth is that this is a dark plan. A plan that could make or break her seemingly perfect life! and she knows it. As the old friends gather at Susie’s for a long weekend of catching up and comparisons, it is clear that despite their lives having taken very different turns, they are all still haunted by a dark and common past. They each know that up until now they have been treading water – waiting for the inevitable moment when they have to face the truth. The question is, now that the time has come, who will sink and who will swim?
Barr is one of Company’s all-time favourite writers, and this is one of her finest moments yet – Company Magazine
Well written and thought provoking – Heat
Plan B
Emma adores living in Brighton, but she loves Matt more. When he suggests they buy the perfect farmhouse in the south of France, she reluctantly agrees, even though he continues commuting to London while she looks after their daughter and the builders. But France is not the idyll he promised, and when she discovers the true reason he spends half his time in London the foundations on which she’s built her life start to crumble…
Plan B is well written, with enough emotional ups and downs and plot twists to keep you reading until the not-so-bitter end – Observer
Atlantic Shift
Gorgeous, world-famous cellist Evie Silverman is classical-lite through and through. Real musicians despise her. Her talent has been promoted way beyond its value because – apparently – everyone loves a blonde girl in lipstick who can do interesting things between her thighs. She’s played for the President of the United States. She’s played at No 10 Downing Street. And tonight she’s playing for Royalty.
But tonight she’s also going to change her life. Tonight she’s going to leave her husband. Tonight, for the first time in fifteen years, she’s going to stand on her own two feet. For tomorrow begins her new life – starting with a trip to New York.
This dark, but funny, tale is full of shocking twists, making it a terrific page turner ***** – Cosmopolitan
Cuban Heels
Maggie moves to Brighton after splitting up with her long-term boyfriend, and, unable to find a job, starts work as a lapdancer. Failing to make any new friends, she writes letters compulsively, and the highlight of her day is the sound of the morning post being delivered. Maggie gradually becomes obsessed with the married couple, Libby and David, living next door. Libby has given up work after having a baby, and is finding life as a full-time mother very difficult. Just as she persuades David that she should return to work, he is asked to take a sabbatical from his management-consultant job. He’s always longed to travel, and convinces Libby that they should spend six months in Cuba, learning Spanish. Maggie, deciding she too wants to travel, follows them to Havana, where the horrors of her past – in particular her young sister’s violent death – begin to haunt her. And as Maggie starts to break down, she tries to take over Libby’s life…
Believe me, she can really write… truly sweat-breaking tension – the Guardian
Baggage
At eighteen, your closest friend commits suicide. At twenty-nine, you’re backpacking in the Australian outback when you see her. She has a husband. She has a ten-year-old son. She has a baby on the way. She claims to be someone else. But you’d recognise her anywhere. Back in England you tell your journalist boyfriend. While he never knew her, he always knew of her — her name is Daisy Fraser and she was awaiting trial over the deaths of four people when she jumped off the Severn Bridge. He thinks: This could be the scoop of the century. He says: Happy Christmas – I’m taking you to Australia to find Daisy.
Backpack
Tansy plans to go travelling with her boyfriend after her alcoholic mother dies. At the last minute he bows out and she finds herself drunk and coked-up – as ever – on a plane to Vietnam and wondering why. Will she return to London skinny, tanned and wise, as planned?
Barr’s debut comes as a blast of fresh air – Express
Charming and very readable – The Big Issue
