Love, Work, Children (2005)

In this sequel to 2003's Morningside Heights, Cheryl Mendelson writes again about the rich, and richly drawn, residents of another moneyed building on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her eye is trained this time on the Frankl family of 444 Riverside Drive — Lesley and Peter and their two adult children, Susan and Louis — whose calm and well-ordered lives are suddenly upended by a car accident, an affair, and a death. Like any good novel of manners, Love, Work, Children is faintly genteel, polished, and quiet — a little too quiet for its own good perhaps. But if you want a satisfying respite from flashy fiction, this is it.