The compelling biography of the beautiful, talented Garman sisters and the glittering, romantic era in which they lived. Each of the seven Garman sisters were strikingly beautiful, artistic and wild. Born around the turn of the nineteenth century, most of the siblings were to become involved in the radical literary and political circles of British life between the First and Second World Wars. Their morals were unconventional: bisexuality, unfaithfulness and illegitimate children were a matter of course. Nevertheless they were high-minded and intensely loyal. They were the last muses: women who were prepared to sideline their own talent, friendships, material comforts - even their own children - in order to beguile and inspire the men they loved. Cressida Connolly's family biography delves into the lives of three of the sisters in intense and revealing detail. Kathleen Garman, the father's favourite, ran away to London to study music. She was spotted by the American sculptor Jacob Epstein, who promptly fell in love with her, and remained his muse until his death. They had three children, she was shot in the shoulder by his first wife and she finally became Lady Epstein in 1955. Mary Garman came to London with Kathleen and studied art at the Slade. She married poet Roy Campbell, who was to become the scourge of the literary establishment by espousing General Franco's side during the Spanish Civil War. Finally there was Lorna Garman, the youngest and most beautiful of all the family. At sixteen she married the wealthy Ernest Wishart, a landowner, communist and founder of the socialist publishing house Laurence & Wishart, who spent most of his life turning a blind eye to his wife's infidelities. Lorna was the love of Laurie Lee's life and they had a daughter. Lucian Freud painted several pictures for her. Through Cressida Connolly's skilfull retelling of these remarkable lives, we get an intimate portrait of a golden age of romance, passion and art that is an original, beguiling read.

'Unusual and brilliant ... It has similarities to Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child.' Deborah Orr, Guardian A beautifully written novel, which tells a story of love and loss through three generations of a family. When she grew up, Ruth would say that she could place the day that her mother had decided to go away. She didn't know the actual date, but she recalled the occasion: it was on the afternoon of a wet day, early in 1942, during a visit to the cinema. She thought she could even pinpoint the exact moment at which Iris had made up her mind to go, leaving her only child behind. Neither of them could have guessed then that they would never live together again. Spanning the second half of the last century, "My Former Heart", Cressida Connolly's mesmerising first novel, charts the lives of three generations of Iris's family, the mother who walked away from her child. Ruth will be deserted again, many years later, by a husband she loves, but not before she has had two children by him. She leaves London to live with her uncle, where she creates a new life for herself with another woman. And we follow the lives of her two children, trying to make a place for themselves in the world in the shadow of the family that precedes them. With its large cast of fascinating characters, this is an outstanding novel about families and their ability to adapt. It surely marks the beginning of long career as a novelist for Cressida Connolly.

A brilliant collection of short stories from an outstanding new voice in contemporary fiction. Happy days have their souring. In this remarkable debut, Cressida Connolly explores the lives of children and young people who, in the wake of events that alter everything, find themselves split like stone. A conversation on a trip to the zoo - words which can't be clutched back - heralds the end of a family; a boy watches his father fold Aunt Rose in his arms and loses his vocation; in an alarming account of sibling rivalry, a young girl becomes jealous of the attention afforded her dying sister. Each of these finely crafted stories is its own forceful and separate world where familiar emotions - love, loss, jealousy, loneliness - are dissembled and show anew.

A TALE OF A TRAGEDY SEEPING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND A FAMILY FRACTURED BY HISTORY AND DESIRE 'Bad Relations is an amazing achievement and one of the most satisfying books you're likely to read this year' The Times 'Haunting and beautiful... In recent British fiction I can think only of Tessa Hadley who rivals Connolly in exacting such intricate, compelling drama from close-knit families... I don't often wish a book were longer, but this one I did' Observer On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning. 'The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head. A wonderful novel' Nina Stibbe 'This is an Atonement-like novel about the messy stuff that is family life' Spectator 'A compelling family saga' Sunday Times

A TALE OF A TRAGEDY SEEPING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND A FAMILY FRACTURED BY HISTORY AND DESIRE 'Bad Relations is an amazing achievement and one of the most satisfying books you're likely to read this year' The Times 'Haunting and beautiful... In recent British fiction I can think only of Tessa Hadley who rivals Connolly in exacting such intricate, compelling drama from close-knit families... I don't often wish a book were longer, but this one I did' Observer On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning. 'The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head. A wonderful novel' Nina Stibbe 'This is an Atonement-like novel about the messy stuff that is family life' Spectator 'A compelling family saga' Sunday Times

'I always wanted to be friends with both my sisters. Perhaps that was the source, really, of all the troubles of my life...' It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister's grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: a great and charismatic leader, who will restore England to its former glory. At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever. 'Wonderfully subtle and compelling' Linda Grant 'Uncanny, evocative, atmospheric' Sunday Times 'Connolly is a terrifically subtle writer... [she] slyly sweeps her readers into the period drama as tensions tauten between families and social classes' Daily Telegraph 'Wonderful, tragicomic... beautifully researched' The Times

Like the better-known Mitfords, the Garman sisters took center stage in Bohemian London during the first half of the twentieth century. Beautiful, flamboyant, and headstrong, they broke away from middle-class conventions, seducing and inspiring a generation of artists. Kathleen, an enigmatic artist's model and aspiring pianist, was the lover and, later, wife of controversial American-born sculptor Jacob Epstein. Mary married the maverick poet Roy Campbell, whose verse attack on the Bloomsbury group following Mary's affair with Vita Sackville-West was the literary scandal of the epoch. Lorna, the youngest and most beautiful of the sisters, was the lover of both the painter Lucian Freud and the poet Laurie Lee.

The Rare and the Beautiful offers the first portrait of a beguiling band of eccentric siblings who possessed an uncanny ability to turn heads, break hearts, and spark creative genius. Set against the exciting backdrop of London's decadent subculture, it evokes their extraordinary milieu of high culture, drama, and scandal.