The reflective essays of one of America's most accomplished authors.Andre Dubus is celebrated for depicting the subtlest of human emotions and finding compassion for the most damaged, and damaging, of characters. In the essays collected here, the author turns the microscope on himself, and the results are no less illuminating. Intimate and evocative, these autobiographical accounts of his childhood in Louisiana, his experiences in the Marine Corps, and, later, his l...

"So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it." —Stephen King, Entertainment WeeklyIn his stunning follow-up to the #1 best-selling House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus draws us into the lives of three deeply flawed, driven people whose paths intersect on a September night in Florida. April, a stripper, has brought her daughter to work at the Puma Club for Men. There she encounters Bassam, a foreign client both remote and too...

Twenty-three unforgettable short stories from one of America's most celebrated literary masters.John Updike once said of his friend and fellow writer Andre Dubus: "[He] is a shrewd student of people who come to accept pain as a fair price for pleasure, and to view right and wrong as a matter of degree." Dubus's characters are depicted in all their imperfection, but with the author's requisite tenderness and compassion. After all, they are just as human as we are, an...

The National Book Award finalist, Oprah's Book Club pick, #1 New York Times bestseller, and basis for the Oscar-nominated motion picture."A page-turner with a beating heart."— Boston Globe"A mixture of classical tragedy perfectly imbued with film noir.... House of Sand and Fog is the work of a writer who is the real th...

The third heartbreaking collection of short stories from the acclaimed master who is "here not to offer comfort but truth" ( The New Yorker).The ominous tone of this exquisite collection is established at its onset, as a bereaved father stalks the man who murdered his son. Three stories later, a college student suffers a violent death at the hands of her boyfriend. And in later episodes, relationships falter and fail, not all fatalities being of the flesh.

This "haunting and subtle" collection of short stories offers a compassionate portrayal of man's journey from childhood to maturity ( Publishers Weekly).For the adolescents in Part One of Andre Dubus's Adultery & Other Choices, youth is characterized by humiliation, alienation, and disappointment: A son struggles to connect with his distant father, and later he must overcome a schoolyard bully. Then, for the soldiers that inhabit Part Two, service ...

From the acclaimed author of 'A Father's Story': A boy looks to the Catholic Church for understanding as his family weathers two failed marriages.Voices from the Moon opens amidst the fallout of Stowe family patriarch Greg's divorce from his wife, Joan; and shortly after, that of their eldest son, Larry, from his wife, Brenda. On the verge of adolescence, young Richie Stowe grapples to make sense of these events and their consequences, and seeks solace in t...

A tour de force collection from an American master of short fiction—"its emotional heartbeat is so insistently truthful" ( The New York Times).In his fifth collection of short fiction, Andre Dubus exhibits his remarkable storytelling range. In "Deaths at Sea," two naval officers, one black and one white, must come to terms with a history and an institution steeped in racism. "After the Game" tells the story of a Hispanic shortstop on a major-league baseball...

A classic collection that contains some of the author's "most compelling and suspenseful" work—including 'The Pretty Girl' and 'A Father's Story' (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review).In his fourth collection, Andre Dubus revisits his central themes of infidelity and fallibility, exploring the minds of his characters with unflinching honesty and unfailing compassion. Set in the New England landscape, and populated by the complex, damaged indiv...

"Taut with tension.… [E]nding with a hint of hope."—Rob Merrill, Associated PressCathartic, affirming, and steeped in the empathy and precise observations of character for which Dubus is celebrated, Gone So Long explores how the wounds of the past afflict the people we become.Gone So Long is a riveting family drama about an ex-con who did time for murder, the estranged daughter he hasn't seen in forty years, and the grandmother an...

This first collection, from one of the most celebrated masters of the form, "restores faith in the survival of the short story" ( Los Angeles Times).For the men and women in Andre Dubus's poignant debut collection, life and love are not without their tribulations. The devout endeavor to reconcile the demands of their faith with their most basic human inclinations. A doctor is confronted with his limitations as a man. Husbands and wives seek solace in the be...

A working-class white man takes a terrible fall.Tom Lowe’s identity and his pride are invested in the work he does with his back and his hands. He designed and built his family’s dream home, working extra hours to pay off the adjustable rate mortgage he took on the property, convinced he is making every sacrifice for the happiness of his wife and son. Until, in a moment of fatigued inattention, shingling a roof in too-bright sunlight, he falls.In constant p...