Bestselling and award-winning Irish author Kevin Barry will be at Kennys’ Bookshop in Galway City, on Thursday, May 30, for a free event to celebrate the launch of his new novel, The Heart in Winter.  It’s at 6pm, when he will be in conversation with Tomás Kenny of thebookshop .

Kevin Barry’s novels include Beatlebone, City of Bohane and Night Boat to Tangier and he’s also an accomplished short story writer, with the collections Dark Lies the Island, There Are Little Kingdoms and That Old Country Music to his credit. His many awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award.

His latest novel, The Heart in Winter, is a tale of young lovers, Tom and Polly, set in 1890s’ Montana. Tom Rourke is a poet and ballad-maker, but also a doper, a drinker, and a degenerate. He feels his life is heading nowhere fast, but then Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain, Long Anthony Harrington. A love affair ignites between Tom and Polly and they head west on a stolen horse, through the badlands of Montana and Idaho.

However, a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still in the distance, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Kennys’ Bookshop are doing an exclusive, signed limited edition of The Heart in Winter. Copies can be bought in the bookshop on May 30 and are also available to pre-order on kennys.ie. This edition is numbered, and signed by Kevin Barry and it has exclusive endpapers and sprayed edges.

To book a ticket for the event in the bookshop on Thursday, May 30 at 6pm, visit www.kennys.ie or call into Kennys’ in the Liosbán Retail Park. Tickets are free but limited.

Pictured: Author Kevin Barry.