Kevin Gerard Barry (20 January 1902 - 1 November 1920) was an Irish republican paramilitary who was executed by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence. He was sentenced to death for his part in an attack upon a British Army supply lorry which resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers

A collection of short stories of rural Ireland in the classic Irish mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today—from the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier. With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

On 1 November 1920, eighteen-year-old UCD medical student Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail for his role in a bungled IRA operation in which three British soldiers were killed. To this day, he remains a vibrant and celebrated icon of patriotic, idealistic death, his name synonymous with youthful republican sacrifice. His life was short, but Kevin was more than a hapless teen swept away in the revolutionary maelstrom of the time. Here, Professor Eunan O’Halpin, a grand-nephew of Barry, accesses exclusive family records and other archives to explore Kevin’s republicanism and the endurance of his memory, one hundred years on from his untimely death. Kevin’s humorous letters show a rounded, irreverent and humane schoolboy and young man, while British records confirm his laconic heroism as he bravely awaited his inevitable execution. From his unique vantage point, O’Halpin also considers Barry’s death in parallel with those other Irishmen who died for the republican cause within days of his own, how his background challenged assumptions about those who fought for Irish independence, and the lasting legacy of having ‘a martyr in the family’.

'City of Bohane' is a visionary novel that blends influences from film and the graphic novel, from Trojan beats and calypso rhythms, from Celtic myth and legend, from fado and the sagas, and from all the great inheritance of Irish literature.

A searing, surreal novel that blends fantasy and reality—and Beatles fandom—from one of literature’s most striking contemporary voices, author of the international sensation City of Bohane It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought eleven years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching forties, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to calm his unquiet soul in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour. Beatlebone is a tour de force of language and literary imagination that marries the most improbable elements to the most striking effect. It is a book that only Kevin Barry would attempt, let alone succeed in pulling off—a Hibernian high wire act of courage, nerve, and great beauty.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A darkly incantatory tragicomedy of love and betrayal ... Beautifully paced, emotionally wise.” —The Boston Globe In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen—Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs—sit at night, none too patiently. The pair are trying to locate Maurice’s estranged daughter, Dilly, whom they’ve heard is either arriving on a boat coming from Tangier or departing on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals, and serial exiles. Rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today, Night Boat to Tangier is a superbly melancholic melody of a novel, full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.

From the author of City of Bohane and Dark Lies the Island, a debut collection that "could easily have been titled ‘These Are Little Masterpieces'" (The Irish Times) This award-winning story collection by Kevin Barry summons all the laughter, darkness, and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hillwalkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity—and a stiff drink. These stories, filled with a grand sense of life's absurdity, form a remarkably surefooted collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners. Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and a 2007 book of the year in the Irish Times, the Sunday Tribune, and Metro, There Are Little Kingdoms marks the stunning entrance of a writer who burst onto the literary scene fully formed.