Left Bank Books, in downtown Belfast, invites the public to a talk and book signing by internationally acclaimed Maine author Lily King to celebrate the recent release of her New York Times bestselling novel, Heart the Lover. The event will take place Monday, Nov. 3, at 6:30 p.m., at the bookshop, located in downtown Belfast. Tickets for King’s talk are available on eventbrite.com or leftbankbookshop.com.

Heart the Lover is both a prequel and sequel to King’s earlier novel Writers & Lovers, in which a 30-something college aspiring writer juggles two suitors. A recent review in The New York Times explains the link between the two books: “[King is] revisiting the same narrator’s life as a college student and then, decades later, as an acclaimed writer and married mother of two, happy and settled in the life she’s chosen. . . .But the drama in the book stands alone; King leaves the connection implied, a reward for her returning audience, until the penultimate sentence.”

In a recent interview with Emma Straub on LitHub, King said every novel she writes “is a reaction to the one I wrote before. . . .When I finished Writers & Lovers and COVID hit, I started in on a political murder mystery set on a Maine island during a pandemic. After about 90 pages, I was bored. . . .I was having no fun. So I turned to a page in the back of my murder mystery notebook and started writing the first scene. . .of Heart the Lover.

King is the award-winning author of six novels and a collection of short stories. Her novel Writers & Lovers (2020) won the New England Society Book Awards, was a New York Times Notable Book, and chosen as a top-ten best book of the year by The Washington Post, NPR, People Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times. Euphoria (2014) won the Kirkus Award, the New England Book Award, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, and named one of the 10 Best Books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Portland, Maine with her family.

For questions about the event, call (207.338.9009) or email (info@leftbankbookshop.com) Left Bank Books.

Ample free parking is available in front of the shop and in an adjacent city lot.