type='html'>In 2005, upper-crust chronicler and shit-stirrer Michael Gross wrote a juicy tell-all book about the inhabitants and history of 740 Park Avenue, one of New York City's most expensive, exclusive, and reclusive co-operative apartment houses. With the dour limestone-faced Rosario Candela-designed building and its cavernous apartments as the back drop, Mister Gross carefully parsed the personal, professional and social lives of many of the building's wildly wealthy residents who have over the years included any number of low-profile but sick-rich industrialists and robber barons, a cavalcade of heirs and heiresses, and a bunch of hedge hogs and tech tycoons.

Four years later Mister Gross came out with Rogues' Gallery, a dense, exhaustively researched and not always flattering exposé that unweaves the complex, sometimes secret and often controversial history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Mister Gross leaves no high society stone un-turned when it comes to revealing the actions and ambitions of a small but enormously influential army of filthy rich folks who, through sheer force of will, money, power, and subterfuge, founded and nurtured The Met into one of the brawniest and best art institutions in the world.

There were those, natch, who were nine kinds of livid and atwitter about Mister Gross' deep and unauthorized examination into the ugly underbelly of The Met. Socialite and philanthropist Annette de la Renta actually threatened legal action because she felt she was portrayed in an unflattering and even defamatory manner. According to a little birdie we'll call Betty Booklover, in the hostile aftermath of the publication of Rogues' Gallery Mister Gross told a group of book-minded types at a Beverly Hills Literary Society luncheon that he'd decided to write his next book about Los Angeles because he thought "it would be a good idea to get out of Dodge for a while."

He spent the next two years researching the histories of several handfuls of palatial properties in the part of Los Angeles known in real estate circles as The Platinum Triangle, a glitzy euphemism for the trio of swank communities that form the meticulously manicured zenith of wealth and power in Los Angeles: Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Holmby Hills.

Using the great and grand estates of The Platinum Triangle as the hyper-luxurious fuel, Mister Gross' latest and soon to be published book Unreal Estate will–as Your Mama understands from publisher information–tell the untold and sometimes sordid stories about how oilmen and movie stars, charlatans and chatelaines, ruthless entrepreneurs and a handful of pornographers transformed hell-hot southern California orange groves into a glittering, forbidding and secretive enclave of make believe and mega-mansions.

Unreal Estate, with its wonderfully alliterative subtitle "Money, Ambition, and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles," won't be available in bookstores until November 1–the children can pre-order the book at a discounted rate on Amazon and Barnes and Noble–but the publicity push for the hotly anticipated tome has none-the-less begun in earnest.

According to a recently released three and some minute promotion video, a flying tour over The Platinum Triangle narrated by Mister Gross himself, Unreal Estate will cross reference the histories of some of the ritzy enclaves' greatest estates with the colorful cast of characters who have owned and occupied them. Legendary estates under the microscope include (but are far from limited to): Greenacres, currently owned by supermarket billionaire and Bill Clinton's former b.f.f. Ron Burkle; The Knoll, once owned by rotund oilman turned billionaire movie man Marvin Davis and now owned by tool and die magnate Eric Smidt; And Owlwood, the regal Robert Farquhar-designed Holmby Hills estate formerly owned by showbiz types like Cher and Engelbert Humperdinck and now owned by Dawn Arnell, the widow of Roland Arnell, a sub-prime lending billionaire who was installed by President George W. Bush as the ambassador to the Netherlands.

As with Mister Gross' previous books there will undoubtedly be a squawking squadron of rich and powerful people who won't be happy about their lives or living rooms being exposed in the pages of Unreal Estate. We'd also bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly there will not be even one real estate gossip, property professional nor any adult resident of The Platinum Triangle who will not devour this book the moment they can get their bejeweled hands on it.

We know we will.

cover image: Crown Publishing

SELLER: Michael C. Hall
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,995,000
SIZE: 3,525 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 full, 1 half and 1 one-quarter bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, after a long drive home down the dramatic and sunny California coast, Your Mama decided to jump right back in the celebrity real estate saddle and spent a few minutes perusing some of the newer listings in Los Angeles. We quickly came across a contemporary crib in the star-stocked Outpost Estates neighborhood described on current listing information as a "celebrity-owned" and the celebrity owner, as per our rudimentary research, is accomplished stage and screen actor Michael C. Hall who has his hillside house in the Hollywood Hills up for grabs with a $1,995,000 price tag.

Mister Hall, in case y'all don't know, has a background in the thee-ay-tuh and has tread the boards both on and off Broadway in scores of musical productions like Chicago and any number of Shakespearean ditties. His big Showbiz break came in the early Aughts when he was cast as a conflicted and closeted homosexual funeral home director on Six Feet Under. Currently and for the last six seasons Mister Hall has shaken his good-lookin' money maker as a creepy, blood splatter pattern analyst who also happens to be a vigilante serial killer on Dexter, a role that has earned him five Emmy nominations and four Golden Globe nominations (plus one Golden Globe win).

Property records indicate Mister Hall purchased his Outpost Estates residence in April 2008 for $1,750,000. This was just 7 or 8 months before he married Jennifer Carpenter who plays his adoptive sister on Dexter. The couple announced they'd split up in late 2010 and their union was officially and legally terminated in December 2011. The divorce may (or may not) have something to do with Mister Hall putting his L.A. home on the market.

Current listing information shows the three-story house, tucked into a steep, up-sloping lot on a quiet and curvaceous canyon road, was originally built in 1933 and was the private residence of master mid-century modern architect Hal Leavitt from 1964 to 2004. There are a total of 4 bedrooms and 3 full and one half and one quarter bathroom, according to marketing materials.

The main floor entry sits high above the street with a half flight stairs that descend into the voluminous, living room with fireplace, blond wood floors, pitched and painted wood-beam ceiling, and over-sized windows with canyon and mountain views. The original dining room is now a sitting room  with built-in wet bar with open shelving, and the existing dining room was added at the back of the house with a plaid-like pattern of wood beams and sky-lights overhead and a wide glass slider that connects to the terraced backyard entertainment areas.

The fully-updated eat-in kitchen, also at the back of the house, has grey Italian tile flooring, sleek but warm walnut cabinetry, taupe-colored subway tile back splashes, some sort of engineered stone counter tops, high-grade commercial-style appliances (most but not all of which are stainless steel), and a cozy, sky-lit space for informal meals.

The four bedrooms are well-separated for privacy and include two guest/family bedrooms (plus at least one pooper) on the upper level, a main floor master suite with canyon view and sky-lit bathroom with walnut cabinetry and sea foam green tile work, and a possible fourth bedroom on the lower level with cork flooring and built-in bench seating. Mister Hall outfitted the lower level bedroom (with attached facility) with various body fitness devices to keep his muscles firm.

A lounging terrace tucked between the back of the house and the raised swimming pool has a built-in barbecue center and built-in fire pit. A concrete stair and path climbs up the hillside and around the back of the pool to an elevated dining terrace cantilevered over the plunge-sized swimming pool.

Mister Hall's neighborhood is well-known for its celebrity residents (and homeowners) who include surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, new mommy actress Charlize Theron, British action flick stud Jason Statham (who bought his house last year from Ben and Christine Stiller), octogenarian bon vivant, author/esssayist and social commentator Gore Vidal, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy. Both Orlando Bloom and Kyle Maclachlan own homes in the Outpost Estates and have attempted to lease them out at various times.

listing photos: The Agency

SELLER: Michael Cunningham
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $1,595,000
SIZE: 1,300 square feet, 1 bedroom, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Once again we have our unofficial (and unpaid) aide de camp Hot Chocolate to thank for turning up the airy, art- and book-filled New York City co-operative apartment of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham, now on the market with an asking price of $1,595,000.

Mister Cunningham, an accomplished scribe who currently teaches writers how to write at Yale, is perhaps best known for his 1999 book The Hours, later made into an Oscar-winning movie with Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. More recently Mister Cunningham published more novels—Specimen Days in 2005 and By Nightfall in 2010—and in 2007 he co-wrote the screenplay for Evening, a film adaptation of a late 1990s novel of the same name by Susan Minot that featured a slew of famous lady actors including Toni Collette, Meryl Street, Glenn Close, Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave and the late Natasha Richardson.

Property records Your Mama peeked at and poked around proved a wee bit incomplete so we don't know exactly when Mister Cunningham—along with his long-time domestic partner, a psychoanalyst and author—purchased the updated and upgraded apartment near New York's bustling Union Square or how much they paid. There is some evidence in the property records they've owned the airy, top-floor aerie since at least 2004.

Current listing information reveals the light-flooded urban residence measures approximately 1,300 square and the floor plan included with marketing materials (above) shows it's currently configured as a pretty damn deluxe one bedroom spread with two bathrooms. One bathroom was all done up and did over as a wet-room with heated concrete floors, honed tile on the walls, a postage stamp-sized sink and a narrow, tower of bookshelves conveniently nested into the wall next to the terlit. The other bathroom, larger and with two gigantic windows, does curious double duty as a library with a soaking tub set into a bamboo and marble plinth and walls lined with built-in book cases. Your Mama can certainly understand why people keep reading material in their poopers and we've definitely heard "library" used as a silly euphemism for the crapper, but Mister Cunningham's bookshelf lined bathroom takes the expression to a whole other level that we've never considered.

Anyhoo, a compact foyer steps up to a lofty, L-shaped kitchen/lining/dining space lined with black ink-stained hardwood floors, glass pocket doors, and half a dozen over-sized, sound-proofed and pane-free windows on two walls that allow for long eastern and southern views over the water towers and roof tops down to the new World Trade Center. The furnishings are decided eclectic and literary salon-friendly with a luscious seal grey silk area rug and variety of mis-matched sofa and chairs accented with animal prints and (what appears to be by may not actually be) an actual animal skin.

The floors switch to polished concrete in the galley-style, center island kitchen expensively finished with stainless steel and bamboo cabinetry, stainless steel counter tops and a full complement of apartment-sized, commercial-style stainless steel appliances that includes a glass fronted Sub-Zero fridge/freezer that probably costs more than a fully loaded Kia and makes Your Mama swoon with appliance envy. An adjoining walk-in pantry is large enough to accommodate a side-by-side washer/dryer set up, a true luxury in a downtown Manhattan apartment.

The various components that comprise the master bedroom spoke off an unusually spacious entry vestibule/dressing room and include two closets (one a walk-in), the two aforementioned bathrooms, and a long, skinny bedroom with three gigantic windows including one that faces north and frames unimpeded, head on views of the Empire State Building.

Current listing information shows the modern-minded co-operative apartment has 12.5-foot ceilings and is equipped with a central climate control, security and sound systems. The boutique-sized building offers a newly renovated lobby and a roof deck. Maintenance and common charges are listed at a not inconsiderable $1,929 per month.

Property records indicate Mister Cunningham and his psychoanalyst man-mate also own at least two tiny (and possibly combined) one bedroom and one bathroom bay front condominiums in (super gay and drop dead gorgeous) Provincetown, MA bought in the early Aughts for $240,000 apiece.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran