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Shop nowThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W
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Learn moreThese nine brilliantly inventive stories capture the eccentricities of the residents of Manhattan’s West 89th Street. Five stories are set in one apartment building, where young Davie Birnbaum watches his neighbors’ lives unfold. The title story reworks F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” with the hero fading away toward infancy on the third floor. In apartment 7E, a lawyer named Zauberman reenacts the life of Hawthorne’s Wakefield, abandoning his family so that he can spy on them. And the proctologist in the penthouse plays Icarus and Daedalus with his misfit son.
These are tales of literary voyeurism, as the narrators look in on other people’s everyday victories and misfortunes—marriages, car accidents, love affairs, and adoptions—and make sense of it all by thinking about the stories they know best.
Gabriel Brownstein’s stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, Northwest Review, the Literary Review, and the Hawaii Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Stefan Rudnicki is a Grammy-winning audiobook producer and an award-winning narrator who has won several Audie Awards, as well as more than twenty-five Earphones Awards, and been named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.
John Rubinstein made his debut as the title role in Bob Fosse’s Pippin. He is a skillful, AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator who has read works by Jonathan Kellerman, Orson Scott Card, Tom Clancy, and Gabriel Brownstein. Rubinstein is also a successful actor and has acted in the films Jekyll, Choose Conner, The Truth About Layla, and 21 Grams. His television credits include The Young and the Restless, Greek, Desperate Housewives, Day Break, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, CSI and Law & Order.
Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo award nine times, the Nebula award three times, the Bram Stoker award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.
Arte Johnson is an award-winning narrator and an American comic actor who won an Emmy Award for his role in the television series Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. His audiobook narations have won two AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for best narration in 2003 and 2007.
Reviews
“A breathing monument to childhood, to Manhattan, and in its good-natured way, to literature itself.”
“Marvelously smooth hybrid tales that prompt readers to think twice about the intersection of life and fiction.”
“Brownstein combines humor, absurdity, and elegy to create linked stories that are strong enough to stand on their own…Sympathetic and perceptive, unpretentious yet engaging, these stories are infused with a genuine sense of place; Brownstein’s New York is a home for memories, a refuge for eccentrics. Highly recommended.”
“Mysterious, resonant, haunting; their echoes will stay with you long after you've finished his lovely, lovely book.”
“Scott Brick’s performance is up to his usual high standards…The different actors work well together and strengthen the sometimes loose ties that bind the stories. The actors, especially old pro Scott Brick, bring the characters to life…[A] fascinating quilt of tales.”
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