A Fine Balance
By Rohinton Mistry
A Lesson Before Dying
By Ernest J. Gaines
A Map of the World
By Jane Hamilton
A Million Little Pieces
By James Frey
A Virtuous Woman
By Kaye Gibbons
Anna Karenina
By Leo Tolstoy
As I Lay Dying
By William Faulkner
Back Roads
By Tawni O’Dell
Black and Blue
By Anna Quindlen
Breath, Eyes, Memory
By Edwidge Danticat
Cane River
By Lalita Tademy
Cry, the Beloved Country
By Alan Paton
Daughter of Fortune
By Isabel Allende
Drowning Ruth
By Christina Schwarz
East of Eden
By John Steinbeck
Ellen Foster
By Kaye Gibbons
Fall on Your Knees
By Ann-Marie MacDonald
Gap Creek: The Story Of A Marriage
By Robert Morgan
Here on Earth
By Alice Hoffman
House of Sand and Fog
By Andre Dubus III
I Know This Much Is True
By Wally Lamb
Icy Sparks
By Gwyn Hyman Rubio
Jewel
By Bret Lott
Light in August
By William Faulkner
Midwives
By Chris Bohjalian
Mother of Pearl
By Melinda Haynes
Night
By Elie Wiesel
One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Open House
By Elizabeth Berg
Paradise
By Toni Morrison
River, Cross My Heart
By Breena Clarke
She’s Come Undone
By Wally Lamb
Song of Solomon
By Toni Morrison
Songs In Ordinary Time
By Mary McGarry Morris
Sula
By Toni Morrison
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
By Malika Oufkir
Stones from the River
By Ursula Hegi
Tara Road
By Maeve Binchy
The Best Way to Play
By Bill Cosby
The Bluest Eye
By Toni Morrison
The Book of Ruth
By Jane Hamilton
The Corrections
By Jonathan Franzen
The Deep End of the Ocean
By Jacquelyn Mitchard
The Good Earth
By Pearl S. Buck
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
By Carson McCullers
The Heart of a Woman
By Maya Angelou
The Known World
By Edward P. Jones
The Meanest Thing to Say
By Bill Cosby
The Pilot’s Wife
By Anita Shreve
The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
The Rapture of Canaan
By Sheri Reynolds
The Reader
By Bernhard Schlink
The Sound and the Fury
By William Faulkner
The Treasure Hunt
By Bill Cosby
Vinegar Hill
By A. Manette Ansay
We Were the Mulvaneys
By Joyce Carol Oates
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day
By Pearl Cleage
Where the Heart Is
By Billie Letts
While I Was Gone
By Sue Miller
White Oleander
By Janet Fitch
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By Andre Dubus III
Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club Selection: 2000
Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century.
House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day.
Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving
in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian
shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing."
The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too
expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the
daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself
and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who
wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.
Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents
something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a
kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is
painfully dark but unfailingly honest.
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