Meir Shalev, whose novels made him one of Israel’s leading writers, died on April 11 at his home in the village of Alonei Abba in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley. He was 74.

Often compared to Mark Twain for the humor lacing his novels, and to Gabriel Garcia Márquez for his use of magical realism, Mr. Shalev focused most of his seven novels on the half century before Israeli independence in 1948. He also wrote eight works of nonfiction and 14 children’s books, and was translated into more than 30 languages.

“What distinguished his prose was its vitality;,” said literary critic Leon Wieseltier. “Everything about his writing is so vivid and alive. And he was wickedly funny.”

Edward Koren, the New Yorker cartoonist who for six decades created a fantasy world of creatures that articulated the neuroses and banalities of middle-class America, died on April 14 at his home in Brookfield, VT. He was 87.

With Charles Addams, James Thurber and Saul Steinberg, Mr. Koren was one of the most popular cartoonists in The New Yorker’s pantheon of humorists.

In addition to his work for the magazine and some commercial clients, he illustrated about 25 books and wrote nine of them. He never retired, worked until the end, his wife said. For The New Yorker’s April 17 issue, he drew Moses on a mount overlooking his people and holding up a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments in Roman numerals while proclaiming, “Time for an update!”

Leonard Abrams, the founder of the East Village Eye, a community newspaper dripping with attitude that, according to The New York Times, “captured in newsprint the do-it-yourself post-punk ethos that ignited the explosion of groundbreaking art, music and fashion in downtown Manhattan in the 1980s,” died of a heart attack on April 1, at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike on his way home to Queens. He was 68.

The Eye, a monthly publication with an international readership, was “a house organ for the graffiti artists, New Wave bands, and maverick fashion designers who created one of New York’s storied cultural flowerings,” The Times said. Stars like Keith Haring and Barbara Kruger, musicians like Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys, fashion designers like Patricia Field and Betsey Johnson made up its pages.

The Eye shut down in the late 1980s, and The New York Public Library added some salvaged issues in Mr. Abrams’ possession to its archive. Of the acquisition, Mr. Abrams said, “I had a nose for news, and the news I had a nose for was 10 years ahead.”

Edward H. Meyer, an empire-building chief executive who transformed a midsize New York advertising agency into a global power, died April 11at his apartment in Manhattan. He was 96.

Mr. Meyer joined Grey Advertising as an account services executive in 1956, when the agency was billing about $34 million a year. He was named president in 1968 and chairman and chief executive in 1970. Over the next 35 years, he built Grey into a behemoth that was billing $4.2 billion at the time of its sale to the British communications company WWP in 2005 for $1.5 billion.

He retired in 2006. To many in the industry, his departure seemed unimaginable. In an interview with Chief Executive magazine late in his career, Mr. Meyer discussed his seemingly endless tenure as Grey’s chief. “When will I retire?” he said. “To paraphrase Warren Buffet, five years after I die.”

Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, who with her husband, Jack, built the empire of tulle and satin known as Kleinfeld’s, the bridal superstore that for decades drew women from all over the world to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, died on March 29 in Manhattan. She was 99.

I Kleinfeld & Son was a family business, originally a small fur concern started by Ms. Schachter’s father, Isadore Kleinfeld. But it was Ms. Schachter, known as Miss Hedda, who with Jack expanded it into what would become perhaps the largest and most famous bridal emporium in the world.

Patricia Leigh Brown, writing in The New York Times in 1987, described it as a store “that is to wedding gowns what the Pentagon is to fighter bombers.”

Jessica Burstein, a photographer best known for her candid shots taken at Elaine’s, the restaurant and celebrity hangout, died on April 11 at her home in Manhattan. She was 76.

In 1992, Ms. Burstein became the official photographer at Elaine’s, her framed photos displayed on the restaurant’s walls. Ms. Burstein met Dick Wolf, the creator of the “Law & Order” franchise at Elaine’s in 1993, and he soon hired her to photograph the crime scenes that were conceived weekly for the original series until it was cancelled in 2010.

She freelanced over the years for newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and magazines like TV Guide, Rolling Stone, People, Time and Vanity Fair. In 2006, she signed on as the exclusive photographer of the construction of the new Yankee Stadium, which would open in April 2009. Her photos were used in a commemorative book for holders of Yankee premium season tickets and were exhibited at the stadium.

Leon Levine, an American businessman and philanthropist who founded the Family Dollar chain of discount stores, died on April 5 in Charlotte, NC. He was 85.

In 1959, he visited a store in Kentucky that sold nothing costing more than a dollar. He liked the simple concept and, in November 1959, at age 22, he opened a similar store in Charlotte. The company grew rapidly. In 1962, Family Dollar did about $2 million in business ($19.9 million in 1923 money). By the end of 1979, Family Dollar had 380 stores in eight states.