DESCRIPTION

By the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers, Lily King's first-ever collection of exceptional and innovative short stories

With Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, Lily King's books catapulted onto bestseller and best-of-the-year lists across the country and established her as one of our most "brilliant" (New York Times Book Review), "wildly talented" (Chicago Tribune), and beloved authors in contemporary fiction. Now, for the first time ever, King collects ten of her finest short stories--half published in leading literary magazines and half brand new--opening fresh realms of discovery for avid and new readers alike.

Told in the intimate voices of unique and endearing characters of all ages, these tales explore desire and heartache, loss and discovery, moments of jolting violence and the inexorable tug toward love at all costs. A bookseller's unspoken love for his employee rises to the surface, a neglected teenage boy finds much-needed nurturing from an unlikely pair of college students hired to housesit, a girl's loss of innocence at the hands of her employer's son becomes a catalyst for strength and confidence, and a proud nonagenarian rages helplessly in his granddaughter's hospital room. Romantic, hopeful, brutally raw, and unsparingly honest, some even slipping into the surreal, these stories are, above all, about King's enduring subject of love.

Lily King's literary mastery, her spare and stunning prose, and her gift for creating lasting and treasured characters are on full display in this curated selection of short fiction. Five Tuesdays in Winter showcases an exhilarating new form for this extraordinarily gifted author writing at the height of her career.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lily King s the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including most recently Writers & Lovers and Euphoria. Her work has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the New England Book Award for Fiction, the Maine Book Award for Fiction, a MacDowell Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and she has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award. She lives in Portland, Maine.

REVIEWS

"Five Tuesdays in Winter moved me, inspired me, thrilled me. It filled up every chamber of my heart. I loved this book." —Ann Patchett

"These are stories of outsiders finding their people, of new perspectives, and they place King--already one of our most poignant and moving contemporary novelists--among Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, and Mary Gaitskill as one of our great short-story writers as well." --Vogue, "Best Books to Read This Fall"

"The acclaimed author of Writers & Lovers returns with ten shimmering stories, each one a gemlike exploration of love, loss, and grief... Each masterful story reminds us that King is one of our finest cartographers of the human heart." --Esquire

"These stories crackle and shine, and King is a master of the thumbnail portrait: she can create a fully realized life in a single paragraph and then alter it in breathtaking ways. This is a must for fans of the short story." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[A] dazzling new collection . . . Though the protagonists range from a young girl to a middle-aged gay man to a gruff nonagenarian grandfather, the stories share certain characteristics; King is a master at conveying through subtle description the small, painful, bumbling moments of life and the awkwardness of human interactions . . . A series of beautifully written character studies brimming with insight into the human condition." --Library Journal, starred review

"King can make you fall in love with a character fast, especially the smart, vulnerable, often painfully self-conscious adolescent protagonists featured in several of the 10 stories collected here...Full of insights and pleasures." --Kirkus, starred review