In the rarefied world of New York City psychoanalysts and their patients, Dr. Estelle Berman belongs to a dying breed. A distinguished analyst, she lives and practices on the Upper West Side and changes outfits between patients, some of whom she likes more than others. And now she has started falling asleep during meetings and forgetting her patients' names. Her colleagues Dr. H. and Dr. Z. observe her mental decline with the objectivity of a Greek chorus, but when it comes to the disappointments in their own lives, they are far less detached. And then there are the patients: Justine, a movie star with a penchant for stealing things; Edith, who writes poems in secret and eats to subdue feelings of panic; and Anna, a self-harming college student whose depression baffles her parents. Ballad of the Black and Blue Mind is a novel of psychological realities that cut close to the bone, a book that dares to show us humanity in all its messy, mystifying, and glorious...

Anne Roiphe was not quite seventy years old when her husband of nearly forty years unexpectedly passed away. But it was not until her daughters placed a personal ad in a literary journal that Roiphe began to consider the previously unimagined possibility of a new man. Eloquent and astute, moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine, Epilogue takes us on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.