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‘The Heart in Winter’ by Kevin Barry

“The Heart in Winter” sees Barry once again attempting something new — and pulling it off with aplomb. His first novel to be set in America is both an Irish-flavored western fraught with danger and brutality and a love story filled with caustic humor and pathos. It wears its influences well — the raw flintiness of Cormac McCarthy, the dizzying exuberance of Flann O’Brien, the taut storytelling of Charles Portis — but Barry’s signature touches predominate and render the narrative propulsive and immersive. Read more

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What Happened to the Well-Mannered Cat Burglar?

Though he sounds like a screenwriter’s invention, Arthur Barry was real. Life magazine called him “the greatest jewel thief who ever lived.” And, as Dean Jobb notes in his delectably entertaining new biography, “A Gentleman and a Thief,” Barry was a triple threat: “a bold impostor, a charming con artist and a master cat burglar rolled into one.” Read more

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‘Bear’ by Julia Phillips

In the beautiful and haunting latest from Phillips (Disappearing Earth), two 20-something sisters contend with economic precarity and their mother’s terminal illness on present-day San Juan Island, Wash. Read more

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