The Times Are Never So Bad (First Edition)

“The Pretty Girl . . . may be the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction [Dubus] has written.”―Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

Stories of men and women attempting to live together, to tell the truth as they see it (or don’t see it), and to survive the crises, and sometimes the violence, of domestic life. Now included in Andre Dubus's Collected Short Stories & Novellas) this original edition includes A Father’s Story, as well as the novella The Pretty Girl. Upon its publication in 1991, Tobias Wolff wrote, “'It is a world of secrets,' says the narrator of A Father’s Story. Andre Dubus’s fine new collection is made of those secrets, observed with an art that is luminous with honesty and generosity. Dubus is interested in essential things―in the shadowy powers that circle our lives and the slender resources of faith and love with which we try to keep them at bay.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) is considered among the most talented American short stories writers of his generation. Born and raised in Louisiana, he spent his adult life living and teaching in blue-collar mill towns in northern New England.
Dubus’s short stories and essays appeared in distinguished literary journals and magazines across the country, and were selected for numerous editions of the Best American Short Stories series, as well as the O. Henry Awards and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Dubus’s work earned him MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and nominations for a National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize.
In addition to seven collections of stories and novellas, Dubus published one novel and two collections of essays. The award-winning films In the Bedroom and We Don't Live Here Anymore were adapted from his stories.
Dubus is buried in Haverhill, Massachusetts.