[Alexandra Chronicles 01] • Riverside Drive

RIVERSIDE DRIVE is about five households in Manhattan who share the same cleaning lady and what takes place after something happens to her and the clients all meet each other for the first time: Beautiful Cassy and her husband, Michael Cochran, are two high-powered TV executives, but he's got a problem and she's got a secret; Howard and Melissa Stewart are the perfect Manhattan couple (so long as no one notices that their marriage is a perfect mess); the wealthy young recluse, Amanda Miller, conducts a social life of weekly tea with an elderly neighbor, chatting with her cleaning lady and having sex with men she does not care to know; the genteel grand dame of Riverside Drive, the widow Mrs. Goldblum, has been fleeced by her son and cheated by her husband's former employer; and Sam and Harriett Wyatt, are rising stars in the upper-class Black community, whose marriage and family life are threatened by Sam's predicament in the corporate suite. And then there is Rosanne, the cleaning lady they all share. "What the television show 'Thirtysomething' is to 'Dynasty,'" The New York Times Book Review wrote, "RIVERSIDE DRIVE is to the usual frenzied, cynical Manhattanites... 8 of the 10 characters are decent, compassionate, patient and even self-sacrificing. The book's concerns are meaningful and not sensationalized; rotten bosses; love (heterosexual and lesbian), loneliness, children. And it is comforting to find characters who pitch in immediately to help one another.

RIVERSIDE DRIVE was a Main Selection of the Literary Guild and has been published in 24 foreign countries. While many readers love the Manhattan setting and the inside look at American urban life, most fall in love with the characters, which prompted Van Wormer to bring many of them back in her later novels. And then, too, of course, as the Los Angeles Times wrote, the novel is "Hot enough to melt the type on the printed page!"