This is so up my alley: I’ve said many times that I love an Irish storyteller, and as it turns out, just maybe I love a Western, too. Set in October of 1891 in Butte, Montana (“screeching and crazy and loud as the depths of hell”), The Heart of Winter is at heart a love story — star-crossed, soul-struck, forbidden love — and in the hands of Kevin Barry, this story is funny, surreal, and tense. Like a mashup of everything I loved in Days Without End, The Sisters Brothers, and The Luminaries, this novel was thoroughly entertaining, emotionally touching, and delightful in its language; I could not have asked for more.