Andre Dubus

"The collection includes the novella "We Don't Live Here Anymore," which served as the basis for the 2004 film of the same title (nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival); the novella also introduces Dubus's writer-protagonist Hank Allison, a character who continue to appear throughout his work. While the collection's opening stories focus on the fragile nature of youth, later stories shift to darker struggles of adulthood,...

Opportunity knocks for an Iranian immigrant in California when the county offers for sale a seized house at a bargain price. It will serve as a launching pad for his real-estate business. When the county discovers it made an error, the drug-addicted woman who owned the house demands its return, but the Iranian refuses. Unfortunately for him, the woman's lover is a policeman who takes the law into his hands. A recent immigrant from the Middle Easta...

After their parents divorce in the 1970's, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed, or killing someone else, or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. Nearby, his father,...

"Daniel Ahearn lives a quiet, solitary existence in a seaside New England town. Forty years ago, following a shocking act of impulsive violence on his part, his daughter, Susan, was ripped from his arms by police. Now in her forties, Susan still suffers from the trauma of a night she doesn't remember, as she struggles to feel settled, to love a man and create something that lasts. Lois, her maternal grandmother who raised her, tries to find peace...

The Fowlers are a normal family in Maine. Matt is the town doctor and loves to fish. His wife, Ruth, is the school's choir leader, and their son, Frank, is home from his first year of college. Frank is in love with Natalie, a young mother who isn't quite divorced yet from her ex-husband, Richard Strout, whose family runs the local cannery. It makes Richard's blood run cold to see his wife running around with another man. And soon, an unthinkable...