The Garden of Last Days

"Dubus does a masterful job of allowing the reader to understand, if not forgive, why each character does what he or she does....Difficult to put down, impossible to forget." Kirkus Reviews

"So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it." Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

In 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 personal, and free with his money. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club, and he's drunk and angry and lonely. From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, and page-turning narrative that seizes the reader by the throat with psychological tension, depth, and realism.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection House of Sand and Fog comes a new, painful, page-turning novel that seizes the reader by the throat.

'One early September night in Florida, a stripper brings her daughter to work. April\'s usual babysitter is in the hospital, so she decides it\'s best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children\'s videos in the office, while she works.
Except that April works at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he\'s drunk and angry and lonely.

From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth, and realism that characterized Andre Dubus\'s #1 bestseller, House of Sand and Fog--and an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.'

"So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it." --Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

Andre Dubus III"is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog, and The Garden of Last Days."His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for fiction, and the Pushcart Prize, and he was a finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. An Academy Award-nominated motion picture and published in seventeen languages, House of Sand and Fogwas a fiction finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a Booksense Book of the Year, an Oprah Book Club selection, and #1 New York Times bestseller.

A member of PEN American Center, Dubus has served as a panelist for the National Book Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University, and Emerson College. He is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is married to the performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.