The first collection of new short fiction by Bruce Jay Friedman in more than two decades, helping to cement his reputation as one of the country's leading black humorists. A New York Times Editor's Selection.

Bruce Jay Friedman is the author of -- among others -- Stern, A Mother's Kiss, The Lonely Guy's Book of Life, Let's Hear It For a Beautiful Day, and The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman which appeared in 1995. Now to be added to the Collected Short Fiction are the stories in Three Balconies. Over the years his stories have appeared in purely literary magazines but also in Esquire, Playboy, The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, and Rolling Stone. The reviews have been a paean of praise. In the Foreward to The Collected Short Fiction Bruce Jay Friedman wrote: "In her late years, my mother confessed to me that she had dropped me on my head when I was two. As I've grown older, I've come to believe that her presumably innocent mistake resulted in the 'tilted' quality I've been accused of having in my work." We can now add to the stories in The Collected Short Fiction the splendidly tilted fictions in Three Balconies, vintage Friedman all.