The Reading Warehouse

The Cross Country Runner brings together Voices from the Moon, his longest, most masterful novella, and The Last Worthless Evening, Andre Dubus' fifth collection of short stories and novellas, along with previously uncollected stories and a new introduction by PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author Tobias Wolff.

'It's divorce that did it, ' his father had said last night. So begins Voices from the Moon, the 126-page novella that shows Dubus at the height of his empathetic powers. Alternating between the viewpoints of Richie Stowe, a serious twelve-year-old who plans to become a priest, and the five other members of his family, the story takes place over the course of a single day.

The four novellas and two stories of The Last Worthless Evening range further than those of any previous Dubus collection-racial tension in the navy, a detective-story homage, a Hispanic shortstop, the unlikely pairing of an eleven-year-old kid and a dangerous Vietnam vet.

This third volume in the series also draws together for the first time many of Dubus' previously uncollected stories, including work from the mid-1960s and the late 1990s. The earliest story appearing here in book form for the first time is The Cross Country Runner, which was originally published in the long-defunct Midwestern University Quarterly in 1966 when Dubus was thirty years old and only recently graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The final story-the Western-themed Sisters-is the last piece of fiction Dubus was working on when he died suddenly in 1999 at just sixty-three years old.

Andre Dubus (1936-1999) is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of the twentieth century. His collections of short fiction, which include Adultery & Other Choices and The Times Are Never So Bad are notable for their spare prose and illuminative, albeit subtle, insights into the human heart. He is often compared to Anton Chekhov and revered as a writer's writer. Dubus was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana to a Cajun Irish Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and later moved to Massachusetts, where he taught creative writing at Bradford College.

Tobias Wolff is the author of several previous books and the editor of a growing list of anthologies. He has received numerous awards, among them the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story. He lives in Northern California and teaches English and creative writing at Stanford University.

Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards, including for his narration of Francisco Goldman's Say Her Name, one of AudioFile magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2011.

Original bio sent from Cassandra:

Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein's Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie(R) Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.

Hillary Huber is one of the most successful voice talents in Los Angeles. Recent books read for Blackstone Audio include Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him by Patricia Marx, A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, and A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart.

Bronson Pinchot, an Audie Award-winning narrator and Audible's Narrator of the Year for 2010, received his education at Yale University, which filled out what he had already received at his mother's knee in the all-important areas of Shakespeare, Greek art and architecture, and the Italian Renaissance. He restores Greek Revival buildings and appears in television, film, and on stage whenever the pilasters and entablatures overwhelm him.

Joe Barrett, an actor and Audie Award and Earphones Award-winning narrator, has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials.