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 human just as we are human, and their fates not so unlike our own. The short stories and novellas compiled here represent the best work of one of our most accomplished and acutely sensitive authors, and make up an anthology unmatched in its collective portrayal of the human condition.REVIEWI return to Andre Dubus whenever I get hungry for a really good short story. However, after recently experiencing a Matt Fowler's revenge in the movie, "In the Bedroom," I revisited this 1996 collection of short stories. That movie is based on one of the twenty-three, stunning stories collected here, "Killings." Novelist Barbara Kingsolver has said that "a good short story cannot simply be Lit Lite." Rather, "it is the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces." Confronting issues including a bereaved father's revenge ("Killings"), abortion ("Miranda over the Valley"), difficult relationships ("Adultery," "The Winter Father," "Voices from the Moon," "The Pretty Girl," "The Pitcher," "Leslie in California"), religion ("If They Knew Yvonne"), obesity ("The Fat Girl"), fatherhood ("A Father's Story"), rape ("The Curse"), sexuality and death, Dubus triumphs in delivering profound truths in these "tight spaces." You won't find happily-ever-after endings here. Rather, these are emotionally compelling stories that feel too real to be fiction. And they will leave you coming back for more.

Yet another tour de force from an American master of fiction 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 team who suddenly and without explanation loses his mind. And in "Rose," a mother finally stands up to her husband's abuse of their children. The four novellas and two short stories that comprise The Last Worthless Evening traverse those facets of American life that are at the same time cruel and commonplace, and with spare, immediate prose, render them universal. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.

Dubus's masterful first collection, in which he brings to life the human condition—in all its sorrow and beautyFor 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 beds of others, even as their infidelities expose them to further heartbreak.Etched in austere prose that is punctuated with powerful emotional moments, the richly drawn characters of Separate Flights command both compassion and admiration, which readers are helpless to deny them. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.

In his third collection, Andre Dubus plumbs the dark depths of the human condition 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. Featuring some of the Dubus canon's most haunting narratives, Finding a Girl in America is a remarkable lesson in the depiction of the darker side of human nature. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.

Dubus's fourth collection is a compassionate depiction of lives that are never as neat as his characters would have them beIn his fourth collection, Andre Dubus revisits the themes of infidelity and fallibility that he has been known to explore with such unflinching honesty and unfailing respect. Set in the New England landscape and populated by the men and women he has come to claim as his own, these stories are ultimately characterized by their extraordinary ordinariness. They are a reverent testament to the quiet sadness of humble lives.Deeply moving and insightful, The Times Are Never So Bad is yet another masterful work by a writer whose Chekhovian sensibilities inform—yet never distract from—his own fully realized perspective. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.

The reflective essays of one of America's most accomplished authors Andre Dubus is celebrated for his ability to depict the subtlest of human emotions in his characters, and when he turns the microscope on himself, the resulting insights are no less illuminative. Intimate and expressive, these autobiographical accounts of his childhood in Louisiana, his experiences in the Marine Corps, and, later, his life as a husband and father, paint a vivid portrait of this acclaimed author. Limned with sapience and depth of feeling, Broken Vessels contains the personal reflections of a writer whose keen perceptions of the human heart are destined to be treasured for generations to come. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.

A collection of fourteen short stories explores the unseen mysteries of everyday life as people caught in a wide variety of circumstances contend with the perversities of love, faith, luck, and fate.

Dubus's second collection of short fiction: a compassionate portrayal of man's journey from childhood to maturity 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 is synonymous with sacrifice, as marriages and limbs falter and fail. But for the bitterly lonely wife of a promiscuous professor, a hopeless affair with a dying ex-priest provides her with the strength necessary to retake control of her life. In the aptly titled follow-up to Separate Flights, Dubus expertly traces the arc of human life, and with subtle grace honors the men and women he portrays with such faithful veracity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Andre Dubus including rare photos and never-before-seen...