pbDark stories of failed dreams and contemporary desperation in Los Angeles.bp In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building--the titular Starlite Terrace--Patrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary, and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth's dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In The Man at Noah's Window, Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in iHigh Nooni. In Eclipse of the Sun, Moss, who lives in fear of the next holocaust, awaits a visit from the long-lost daughter he has tracked down. In Rider on the Storm, Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who almost played on the Turtles' 60s-hit Happy Together, strives to find an escape from his personal guilt. And in The Woman in the Sea of Stars, June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best o