Stud Cantrell senses a last chance for love and glory."--BOOK JACKET.

“Long Gone is a tremendous novel, and Alafair Burke is one of the finest young crime writers working today.” --Dennis Lehane, author of Moonlight Mile Echoing the intensity of Harlan Coben’s Tell No One and the psychological depth of Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know, Alafair Burke’s first stand-alone novel catapults her into the top ranks of modern suspense. In New York City’s cut-throat world of art, appearances can be deceiving—especially when art world newcomer Alice Humphrey becomes a suspect in a gruesome murder at a Chelsea gallery, and is thrown into a treacherous labyrinth of intrigue, crime, and conspiracy. Now, Alice must discover the truth behind the murder before the unsolved mystery claims her as its next victim.

The first time fourteen-year-old Harlan Q met his grandfather, he was laid up on a porcelain prep table at the local funeral home with a grin on his face—like he was getting the last laugh. His will leaves a chunk of money and a Cadillac convertible. The catch? His body must be buried in Las Vegas. With little money, Harlan Q convinces his Bible-thumping father to load the corpse in the back of their station wagon and take the road-trip to honor his grandfather's wishes. Along the way they pick up Warrior, a Hollywood-bound, Zen-minded actor-in-training. He surprisingly helps Harlan begin to understand his thoughts and life—separate from the thinking of his father—during a covert stop at his late grandfather's bar, Long Gone Daddy's.

"Taut with tension.… [E]nding with a hint of hope."—Rob Merrill, Associated Press Cathartic, affirming, and steeped in the empathy and precise observations of character for which Dubus is celebrated, Gone So Long explores how the wounds of the past afflict the people we become. Gone So Long is a riveting family drama about an ex-con who did time for murder, the estranged daughter he hasn’t seen in forty years, and the grandmother angry enough to kill him. A profound exploration of the struggle between the selves we wish to be, and the ones—shaped by chance and circumstance, as well as character—that we can’t escape, it confirms Andre Dubus’s reputation as a novelist whose “compassion is unsentimental and unblinking, total and unwavering” (Paul Harding).

A journey through the history of country music.