Riverside Drive

At New York’s most-sought-after address, passions and secrets collide, and love is destroyed, then found again in the most unlikely place.

Michael and Cassie Cochran are television's perfect couple, but the veneer of their enviable marriage is starting to crack. And only one of them is trying to salvage it.

Sam and Harriet Wyatt have spent a lifetime getting to where they are, but they could lose it all in the blink of an eye after Sam stumbles upon a corporate secret.

Howard Stewart has the perfect job and the perfect wife—both of which are a perfect lie.

Amanda Miller has wealth, fame and a lifetime of heartache. She's given up on men—until she meets the one she can't resist.

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. (May)

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. She lives in Connecticut, New York and Shelburne, Nova Scotia.