The first-ever collection of stories by New York Times bestselling writer Lily King, including previously published pieces as well as new, original stories.
FIVE TUESDAYS IN WINTER
by Lily King
Grove Press, November 2021
Hailed as “brilliant” (New York Times Book Review) and “wildly talented” (Chicago Tribune), New York Times bestselling writer Lily King has received widespread acclaim for her fiction. Her novel Euphoria (over 500,000 copies sold worldwide) was a breakout success, while, more recently, her novel Writers & Lovers was an instant New York Times bestseller, earned rapturous reviews, and was selected for numerous best of the year lists. Now the inimitable Lily King returns with her first-ever collection, including several never-beforepublished stories. Spanning over two decades of her life as a writer, King’s thoughtfully curated work elegantly explores her trademark themes of love, family, career, and loss.
In these stories, a teenage girl falls in love with her boss’s boyish yet married son. After her husband dies, a mother escapes to the German seaside with her daughter for a holiday she can barely afford, desperate to help the two of them grieve. And a man persists in trying to wake up his teenage granddaughter from a coma—the result of a skiing accident—cooing softly as he holds bottled scents to her nose, hoping the smell of sea water and grenadine will bring her back to him. Through these characters and more, Lily King intimately illustrates the extraordinary emotions that course through ordinary people.
Through galvanizing leaps of faith, heartbreaking conversations with lovers and children, and jolting violence at the hands of old and new friends, this profound, tender collection confirms Lily King as one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, Euphoria, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014, and Writers & Lovers. She lives in Maine.
The year is 1994, and South Africa is in political turmoil as its first democratic election looms. Against a backdrop of apartheid and racial violence, traumatized artist Yolanda Petersen returns from the Appalachian foothills to the land of her youth at the behest of her mother. While there Yolanda longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Ingrid, the product of an illegal mixed-race affair with a white man. But Ingrid is missing, and as Yolanda quickly discovers, she isn’t the only woman in Cape Town desperate to protect her own. Ingrid’s very existence is proof of a white man’s crime, and that man’s mother will do anything—even kill—to ensure the truth remains buried.
On the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, Heera and her best friends, siblings Marie and Marco, are rebelliously teasing what fun can be had out of life in Raleigh, North Carolina. But no matter how much Heera defies her strict upbringing, from pickpocketing to vandalism, she’s always avoided any real danger—until Marie is killed in an accident in front of her and Marco. Then everything changes. Marco begins calling himself Crash and over the years to come, spends his days womanizing and burning through a string of jobs. Heera’s dream of college in New York is upended by a family illness. She soon finds herself trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to a wealthy man and in-laws who become fearful of the devastating force of community gossip.
Johannes looks back on his childhood in East Germany, and the cracks that ran through it: his mother’s early death, his father’s mysterious disappearance. All his questions remained unanswered, and he now treads carefully on his path through life. When Johannes finds a letter in an old chest – addressed to his father and sent only a few days before he left his son without a word – the discovery transforms not only his future, but also his past as a child in the GDR before the Wall came down. With penetrating vigour and forceful clarity, Matthias Jügler tells a story of loss and betrayal, of the value of memory and the urgent questions that are troubling a whole generation. A warm-hearted, radiant novel written with extraordinary linguistic intensity.
Une minisérie adaptée du roman MOTHER DAUGHTER WIDOW WIFE de Robin Wasserman est en développement aux studios Sony Pictures Television. Elle sera produite par Sharon Hall (Breaking Bad, Masters of Sex, Justified, Damages, The Expanse…) et c’est l’auteure elle-même qui travaillera sur le scénario. La date de sortie n’a pas encore été annoncée. (Lire l’
MOTHER DAUGHTER WIDOW WIFE est centré autour de la mystérieuse « Wendy Doe », femme amnésique retrouvée dans un bus sans papiers d’identité, et des personnages qui gravitent autour d’elle : Dr Strauss, le célèbre psychiatre qui étudie son cas, Lizzie, la chercheuse qui travaille avec lui, et plus tard Alice, la fille de Wendy. En quête d’informations sur sa mère disparue, cette dernière va contribuer à mettre au jour le sombre secret du Dr Strauss et son rôle dans la vie des trois femmes…