“In our time of anxiety and isolation, King writes stories to curl up in, by which I mean they afford us something rarely celebrated in literature: comfort.“—New York Times Book Review
“Fierce, funny, tender stories that demonstrate both range and emotional heft… All of them are stunners.”—Boston Globe
“King returns to the page with a collection of short stories that continue to prove her prowess in all things love and human connection.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Lily King isn’t afraid of big emotional subjects: desire and grief, longing and love, growth and self-acceptance. But she eschews high drama for the immersive quiet of the everyday… Here we inhabit the worlds of authors and mothers, children and friends; we experience their lives in clear, graceful prose that swells with generous possibility. This is a book for writers and lovers, a book about storytelling itself, a book for all of us.”—Washington Post
“Like her acclaimed books Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, King’s latest finds characters longing for love and wrestling with change.”—Time
“Raw yet hopeful.”—Irish Times
“The award-winning author of Euphoria and four other novels, speaks volumes in short form. Her new collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, is as compelling and accomplished as anything you’re likely to read in the genre . . . Story for story, this collection is simply a knockout.”—Portland Press Herald
“Wonderfully absorbing… All 10 of these tales build gratifyingly to moments of epiphany that never feel unearned… Long form or short, this is a writer who has mastered the art of conveying depths of human feeling in one beautiful sentence after another.”—NPR
“Breathlessly beautiful.”—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
“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)
“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”
“A masterful, enchanting collection of stories illuminating the spectrum of human love—the platonic, the unrequited, the forbidden and the unconditional.” —People
“King’s collection continually breaks through stereotypes, defying expectation and not allowing the reader to pinpoint anything typical about her short stories… King honors how human life is never what we think it is, always changing and morphing. By allowing characters their full range of pain, vulnerability, and happiness, Five Tuesdays in Winter drops readers into imperfect lives, evoking awe and anger and admiration and futility, reminding us how it feels to be human.”—Ploughshares
“King’s observations are both sharp and generous. Five Tuesdays in Winter is a collection worth dipping into again and again.”—Bookpage
“[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
“King follows five critically acclaimed novels, most recently Euphoria and Writers & Lovers, with her first collection of short stories. Ann Patchett raved that the new offering ‘moved me, inspired me, thrilled me. It filled up every chamber of my heart. I loved this book.’”—The Millions (“Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2021 Book Preview”)
