All are atmospheric novels of violence, sex, and suspense that explore the underside of city life, most particularly in New York.

He has lived since 1987 in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, with his wife, the writer Kathryn Harrison, with whom he has three children.

He was an editor at Harper's Magazine from 1989 until 2001 and in that time worked with such writers as David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Jane Smiley, Russell Banks, Michael Paternite, Lucy Grealy, Thom Jones, Scott Anderson, Sebastian Junger, Ken Kalfus, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Barbara Ehrenreich, Charles Bowden, Joy Williams, David Quammen, William H. Gass, Joe Conason, David Guterson, Bob Shacochis, Joyce Carol Oates, Lewis Lapham, and many others.

In 2001 he was appointed senior editor at Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, where he edits both fiction and non-fiction.

Among the many writers he has worked there with are Anthony Swofford, Jeff Hobbs, Jason Matthews, Nic Pizzolatto, Helen Thorpe, Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish of The Washington Post, Ted Fishman, Kem Nunn, John Dalton, Richard Snow, Craig Nelson, Greg Iles, Bruce Weber, Craig Unger, Steven Johnson, Alexandra Horowitz, Rick Perlstein, Carol Sklenicka, Kevin Fedarko, Linda Fairstein, Robert Ferrigno, Daniel Okrent, Doug Stanton, S.G. Gwynne, and Chuck Hogan.