Dark stories of failed dreams and contemporary desperation in Los Angeles. 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, â€? Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In “Eclipse of the Sun, â€? 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, â€? Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who “almost playedâ€? on the Turtles‿ 60s-hit “Happy Together, â€? strives to find an escape from his personal guilt. And in “The Woman in the Sea of Stars, â€? June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best of a disconnected life until she emerges reborn through ashes strewn in the illuminated swimming pool of the Starlite Terrace.   In each of these four tales of wannabes and almost-weres, Roth's L.A. portraits unfold in rare style, and, in Krishna Winston‿s masterful translation, the hopeless, loveless perversion of an Ed Ruscha-inspired California becomes a compelling pageant of all-American grotesques that is not to be missed. Â