It's New York's most sought-after address. A boulevard lined with majestic mansions and impressive apartments, it's where passions and secrets collide, where love is destroyed, then found again in the most unlikely place. Step onto Riverside Drive, where friends and neighbors determine each other's destinies.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Cassy and Michael Cochran are TV news producers. Michael is a drinker and womanizer, Cassy a silent sufferer. Howard Stewart, successful (though underpaid) book editor, is the unhappy husband of Melissa, a banker who was born rich and is getting richer. Sam and Harriet Wyatt, a black couple, are well-off and happy until Sam discovers that his employer does business with South Africa. Amanda Miller, a wealthy, reclusive divorcee, is a secret voluptuary, and elderly Emma Goldblum lives with her cat at the edge of poverty. These people inhabit the gracious apartment buildings that line Manhattan's Riverside Park. The one thing that connects them is their spunky cleaning lady, Rosanne DiSantos, who lives with her drug addict husband in a seedy West Side hotel. We follow this group from cocktail party to block party, through marital and job strife. Van Wormer's prose, in her first novel, ranges from florid to indifferent, but her realistic characters and situations, combined with occasional blasts of sensationalized sex, will keep her readers turning the pages. Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild featured alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
The warm, feisty cleaning lady works for families living on New York's Riverside Drive. Mondays are for the loveless yuppies; Tuesdays, for the romantic, but disillusioned, heiress; Wednesdays, for the successful black couple with alcoholism in their past; Thursdays, for the elderly and impoverished lady; and Fridays, for the married, though in crisis, TV producers. The lives of these families intertwine improbably in this fluffy, predictable, but pleasant, first novel. Ironically, one character is an editor committed to good literature; the author herself is a former editor at Doubleday, which is heavily promoting this book. But why quibble over trite phrases or misplaced modifiers when this book is what everyone will be reading on the beach? Literary Guild featured alternate. Janet Boyavin Blundell, M.L.S., Brookdale Coll., Lincroft, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Details
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More About the Author
Quick Reading Order Lists:
"The Alexandra Chronicles": 1)Riverside Drive 2)West End 3)Any Given Moment 4)Talk 5)Exposé 6 )The Last Lover 7)Trouble Becomes Her 8)The Bad Witness 9)The Kill Fee 10)Mr. Murder 11)Riverside Park
"The Sally Harrington Mysteries": 1)Exposé 2)The Last Lover 3)Trouble Becomes Her 4)The Bad Witness 5)The Kill Fee 6)Mr. Murder
The "Stand Alone" Novels: 1)Benedict Canyon 2)Jury Duty 3)Just for the Summer
Best-selling author Laura Van Wormer has been a force in fiction since the publication of "Riverside Drive" in 1988. She is the author of thirteen novels. Her engrossing plots, memorable characters and insider knowledge of the media professions have won praise from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and People.
After graduating from Darien High School in Connecticut Laura spent a year at the University of Arizona before transferring to Syracuse University, from where she received a B.S. in Public Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School and minored in English.
Upon graduation Laura went to New York looking for a job in television but landed a job instead as secretary to the editor-in-chief of Doubleday & Company. "Every day my head was spinning," Laura says. "Everyone from Leon Uris to William F. Buckley, Jr., Victoria Holt to Phyllis Whitney, Edna O'Brien to Stephen King, Arthur and Alex Hailey to Allen Drury were all publishing with Doubleday at that time."
Laura rose through the editorial ranks somewhat specializing in celebrity and mass media-related books. Caught in a deadline crunch one year, Doubleday and 20th Century Fox flew Laura out to the West Coast to create a book based on the hit series, "Dynasty". Upon her return to New York an offer was made to create a book for the rival show, "Dallas". Laura ended up taking the assignment and leaving Doubleday to write her first novel.
The novel ended up taking four years. To keep body and soul together Laura became "The Official Dallas Historian" (!) and created a game for Lorimar based on the show. She then took on "Knots Landing", wrote copy for the back of jigsaw puzzles and created a game.
Finally she finished her first novel, "Riverside Drive", published in 1988, which is currently in its 5th edition. She has been a full time writer ever since.
Laura is a longtime member of the Authors Guild of America, and also (because of "Jury Duty" and the Sally Harrington mysteries) the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She lives in Connecticut, New York and Shelburne, Nova Scotia.
"The Alexandra Chronicles": 1)Riverside Drive 2)West End 3)Any Given Moment 4)Talk 5)Exposé 6 )The Last Lover 7)Trouble Becomes Her 8)The Bad Witness 9)The Kill Fee 10)Mr. Murder 11)Riverside Park
"The Sally Harrington Mysteries": 1)Exposé 2)The Last Lover 3)Trouble Becomes Her 4)The Bad Witness 5)The Kill Fee 6)Mr. Murder
The "Stand Alone" Novels: 1)Benedict Canyon 2)Jury Duty 3)Just for the Summer
Best-selling author Laura Van Wormer has been a force in fiction since the publication of "Riverside Drive" in 1988. She is the author of thirteen novels. Her engrossing plots, memorable characters and insider knowledge of the media professions have won praise from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and People.
After graduating from Darien High School in Connecticut Laura spent a year at the University of Arizona before transferring to Syracuse University, from where she received a B.S. in Public Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School and minored in English.
Upon graduation Laura went to New York looking for a job in television but landed a job instead as secretary to the editor-in-chief of Doubleday & Company. "Every day my head was spinning," Laura says. "Everyone from Leon Uris to William F. Buckley, Jr., Victoria Holt to Phyllis Whitney, Edna O'Brien to Stephen King, Arthur and Alex Hailey to Allen Drury were all publishing with Doubleday at that time."
Laura rose through the editorial ranks somewhat specializing in celebrity and mass media-related books. Caught in a deadline crunch one year, Doubleday and 20th Century Fox flew Laura out to the West Coast to create a book based on the hit series, "Dynasty". Upon her return to New York an offer was made to create a book for the rival show, "Dallas". Laura ended up taking the assignment and leaving Doubleday to write her first novel.
The novel ended up taking four years. To keep body and soul together Laura became "The Official Dallas Historian" (!) and created a game for Lorimar based on the show. She then took on "Knots Landing", wrote copy for the back of jigsaw puzzles and created a game.
Finally she finished her first novel, "Riverside Drive", published in 1988, which is currently in its 5th edition. She has been a full time writer ever since.
Laura is a longtime member of the Authors Guild of America, and also (because of "Jury Duty" and the Sally Harrington mysteries) the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She lives in Connecticut, New York and Shelburne, Nova Scotia.
Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can't stop after one book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Riverside Drive (Paperback)
If you start the saga of the Cochrans and Alexandra Waring, you must then progress to "West End" and then on to "Any Given Moment" before you can get a normal night's sleep. These are memorable characters and you find yourself thinking and caring about them throughout all three books!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Oldie but a goody,
By Judith Agee (SmallTown, Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Riverside Drive (Paperback)
I just discovered Laura Van Wormer's books in a dusty little corner of a cozy used book store.Picked up several and put them in chronological order and RIVERSIDE DRIVE was the first. The author's debut it turns out. What a good solid read. Characters, colorful and fully drawn. The flavor of the city. The news biz. The ugly face of alcoholism. The warmth of friendship. The joy of new love, the sadness of love gone bad. A grand soap opera, but with a realness to the characters, their reactions to life's slings and arrows. This was written in 1988 and is perhaps a wee bit dated in some of the attitudes. But if you can let yourself time travel a bit, you won't notice:}
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Heartwarming Story About People You Wish You Knew,
By A Customer
This review is from: Riverside Drive (Paperback)
A bit of a fairy-tale optimism flavors this book but to me it was respite from the Big Bad World. Despite its Pollyanna undercurrents, the characters are 3-dimensionally portrayed albeit quaint creatures that I wish would move into my neighborhood.
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