Amazon Significant Seven, March 2008: No one has a better ear and eye for the American city than Richard Price, and in Lush Life, his first novel in five years, he leaves the fictional environs of Dempsy, New Jersey, where Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan were set, for a few crowded blocks of Manhattan's Lower East Side. There's a crime at the heart of the story, but you don't read Price for plot. Instead, you listen as he peels apart layers of class and history through the way his characters talk to each other: hipster bartenders who tell people they're really writers, homeboys from housing projects named after the Jewish immigrants who have long left the neighborhood, and cops, cops, cops, circling the streets looking for a collar, disappearing into their cases as their own lives go to ruin. --Tom Nissley
Richard Price is the author of seven novels, including
Clockers,
Freedomland, and
Samaritan. He won a 2007 Edgar Award for his writing on the HBO series
The Wire.
Bobby Cannavale won an Emmy Award for his guest appearance on the hit TV show Will & Grace. His other TV credits include Third Watch, Ally McBeal, Law & Order, Oz, and Six Feet Under.