The Heart Is a Burial Ground

**'There is an addictive pungency to this exotic tale of lives lived loudly' *Sunday Times*

'The remarkable life of Caresse Crosby, now retold by her great-granddaughter' *****Observer*

A vivid and inventive debut novel about four generations of women in a family, their past and their legacy, which evokes the work of Kate Atkinson, Tessa Hadley and Virginia Baily.**

***'I will describe it as best I can. This is their story. Or perhaps just mine. Let us begin, again . . .'***

On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother’s home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. ‘Home’ is the sprawling Italian castle of **Roccasinibalda**, and **Diana**’s mother is the legendary **Caresse Crosby**, one half of literature’s most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of **Harry Crosby**, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the ‘Lost Generation’.

But it was not only Harry who was lost. Their incendiary love story concealed a darkness that marked mercurial **Diana **and still burns through the generations: through Diana's troubled daughters **Elena** and **Leonie**, and Elena’s young children.

Moving between the decades, between France, Italy and the Channel Islands, Tamara Colchester’s debut novel is **an unforgettably powerful portrait of a line of extraordinary women**, and the inheritance they give their daughters.

***'*Sensual, evocative and rich with observational truth, this is a vivid and intricate portrait of three extraordinary women' Jeremy Page, author of *Salt*

'Evocative' *Good Housekeeping***

'This is a **bold, striking and confident** novel filled with vivid, sometimes shocking, scenes. It spans decades, generations and continents without ever feeling disjointed. This is **a stunning introduction to an intriguing new voice in British fiction**, who does real justice to her prodigious forebear' **Netgalley reviewer **

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