Cynthia M. Weiner

Jan 23, 2025 | crimereads.com | Cynthia M. Weiner

On August 26, 1986, I awoke to the news that 18-year-old Jennifer Levin had been found strangled to death in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum. The next day, a popular, preppy, movie-star-handsome 19-year-old she had left an Upper East Side bar with was charged with her murder. After first claiming he hadn’t been with her, he changed his story: her death was an accident, he said; he was fighting her off when the sex got too aggressive.

Jan 21, 2025 | largeheartedboy.com | Cynthia M. Weiner

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Cynthia Weiner’sA Gorgeous Excitement is a riveting debut, a coming-of-age novel as hypnotically told as it is suspenseful. Kirkus wrote of the book:“Terrific debut . . .

Jan 17, 2025 | airmail.news | Cynthia M. Weiner

On a cold and rainy evening on the Upper East Side, inside Dorrian’s Red Hand, the bar that was the real-life backdrop to the infamous 1980s “Preppy Murder,” the writer Cynthia Weiner is sitting before a platter of french fries, recalling her misspent youth. Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” is playing on the sound system, hearkening back to an era that seemed innocent until, all of a sudden, it didn’t.

Nov 9, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | Cynthia M. Weiner |Kristin Hannah |Paula Hawkins

Carefully paced and beautifully written, this edgy coming-of-age novel succeeds on all counts. An 18-year-old girl in Manhattan faces the troubled summer of 1986. In an author’s note prefacing her terrific debut, Weiner explains that she was inspired by her experiences during the summer of what became known as the Preppy Murder in Central Park.