Richard Greenberg

"On the verge of death for the umpteenth time, Anna makes a shocking confession to her grown children: an affair from her past that just might have resonance beyond the family. But how much of what she says is true? While her children try to separate fact from fiction, Anna fights for a legacy she can be proud of. With razor-sharp wit and extraordinary insight, Our Mother's Brief Affair considers the sweeping, surprising impact of indiscretions both large and small." -- Page of cover.

"In this category-defying book, Katie Roiphe takes an unexpected and liberating approach to the most unavoidable of subjects: death. She examines the final days of five great writers and artists. Here is Susan Sontag, the ultimate intellectual, finding her commitment to rational thinking tested during her third bout with cancer. Here is Sigmund Freud fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna for London only to continue the constant cigar-smoking that he knows will soon kill him. Roiphe takes us to the hospital room where, after receiving the worst kind of diagnosis, seventy-six year old John Updike immediately begins writing a poem. She vividly portrays Dylan Thomas's extraordinary self-destructive tendencies that culminate in his infamous final collapse at a Greenwich Village tavern. And she shows us how Maurice Sendak's beloved books for children are infused with his lifelong obsession with death, if you know where to look. In each of these glorious creators' final moments, Roiphe finds bravery, suffering, bad behavior, passionate love, peacefulness, bursts of energy, and profound thinking. In a voice that is unsentimental, compassionate, urgent, Roiphe helps us to look boldly at death and be less afraid"--

"David Sedaris meets Garrison Keillor in this hysterically funny and thoughtful collection of original essays by Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg, who shares anecdotes and observations gathered from a lifetime of perfecting Rules for Others to Live By. Between worrying about his artist friends and reconciling his complicated feelings about New York City, Pulitzer finalist Richard Greenberg still finds time to be something of a hermit--and it seems to be working out for him. As a playwright, he says, the time spent alone making up stories about fictional characters has sharpened his sensitivity to real life and all of the bizarre, unpredictable, and even unimaginable people beyond one's front door. In Rules for Others to Live By, he shares stories from his life, observations from two decades of residence on a three-block stretch of New York City, and musings from his brilliant, if not a little unusual, mind. Spanning a range of topics from friendship to writing, urban life to visiting parents, health crises to hypochondria and other paranoid tendencies, Greenberg's distinct and hilarious voice articulates our own mild obsessions and the idiosyncrasies we can only hope will go unnoticed in a crowd"--

Published with three short stories this novella cemented Capote’s position at the forefront of American literature. It is the story of a friendship between New York neighbours, good time girl Holly Golightly and the unnamed male narrator.

The time is New Year's Eve, 1929. In an elegant New York brownstone on "Millionaire's Row" (West 23rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues), Sam Hammer, a Jewish department store tycoon and his non-Jewish wife, Amy, bid their last few guests farewell with a parting wish: "A better year ahead." But, as that pivotal year begins, the shadow of the enormous London Terrace apartment complex under construction looms over their home. The shadow also portends Wall Street's impending collapse, and the growing strain upon the Hammer's marriage. Though Amy and Sam seem devoted to each other, their marriage has been childless, leading to a "what's-the-point" abandonment of sexual relations. The looming Great Depression is likely to put a crimp in the lavish lifestyle of the Hammers and their friends--just as the rapidly rising giant London Terrace apartments across the street is about to rob their house of much of its light.--From publisher's description.

"The Assembled Parties welcomes us to the world of the Bascovs, an Upper West Side Jewish family in 1980. In a sprawling Central Park West apartment, former movie star Julie Bascov and her sister-in-law Faye bring their families together for their traditional holiday dinner. But tonight, things are not usual. A houseguest has joined the festivities for the first time and he unwittingly, or perhaps by design, insinuates himself into the family drama. Twenty years later, as 2001 approaches, the Bascovs' seemingly picture-perfect life may be about to crumble. A stunning play infused with humor, The Assembled Parties is an incisive portrait of a family grasping for stability at the dawn of a new millennium."--Publisher description.