Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (Picador, $35)

Lily King isn’t afraid of big emotional subjects, but she eschews high drama for the immersive quiet of the everyday. In this, her first story collection, she explores some of the same territory as her beloved novel Writers & Lovers .In Creature, 14-year-old Carol, a mother’s helper to a wealthy matriarch’s grandchildren, becomes swept up in the spell of Jane Eyre until her employer’s married son crudely gets at her. Her last story, The Man at the Door ,isan exceptional work of magic realism. The young mother-narrator, an aspiring novelist, has one simple goal: ‘‘All she wanted was to get back to the page at her desk.’’ But her baby just won’t stay napping, to give her the peace she needs and then there’s a stranger ringing her bell and tapping at the window. After a dressing down and when at last she gets rid of him and returns to the page that had been calling her, she finds an ending to her own book – and this one – that feels triumphant.