Cynthia Weiner Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Cynthia Weiner is an accomplished American author.

On top of her long career in writing, Cynthia has also spent significant time teaching fiction. The short stories that she writes have been featured in different publications such as The Sun, Ploughshares, and Epiphany.

The story that she wrote titled ‘Boyfriends’ was given a Pushcart Prize. Cynthia has also served as the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City. Her debut novel A Gorgeous Excitement was inspired by her time growing up on the Upper East Side of New York in the eighties, and the Preppy Murder of 1986. The book was selected as a Best Book of 2025 by Kirkus Reviews, the New Yorker, and Oprah Daily.

These days Cynthia continues to write and she lives in the Hudson Valley in New York.

A Gorgeous Excitement is the debut book from Cynthia Weiner. This is an astounding first novel that is set in New York in the eighties, a time where you could get cocaine just as easily as you could get ice cream. During this time, one woman enters into a summer of incredible possibility and is unaware of the danger looming behind. If you like a fun read that will have you hooked from start to finish, this might be the perfect pick for you!

Travel back along with Cynthia Weiner to the summer of 1986. Everyone is buzzing and talking after the horrible news where a girl is discovered dead in Central Park. She is found in a state behind the Metropolitan Museum, with most of her clothes off, her legs going all around, her arms over her head, and with a crushed larynx.

Main character Nina Jacobs is alive during the summer of 1986 and she has two things on her list to get done during this time before autumn comes. She wants to avoid the depression-fueled rages that her mother has and she also wants to be able to lose her virginity, preferably before college starts.

Both of the tasks are fairly difficult to accomplish if not impossible. Her mother is usually in her bed for days and when she is not laid up doing that she is busy taking things out on Nina over anything, any perceived slight that she can find. When a sex act with someone else goes wrong, Nina is devastated to find out that everyone is talking about her at Flanagan’s, the bar on the Upper East Side where everyone in Manhattan society meets up.

It probably isn’t helping anything with the fact that Nina is Jewish and is still an outsider when it comes to the more accepted mainstream blondes with blue eyes who are everywhere here. She still manages to find a way to fit in somewhat and be accepted, mostly by taking alcohol and prescription drugs from her parents’ medicine cabinet.

At Flanagan’s, she pines after Gardner Reed. He’s a guy with plenty of charm– not that the preppy guy needs it, because he’s so handsome. All the guys wish that they were him and all the girls want to be with him. Once Nina gets introduced to the seductive white mistress known as cocaine, she starts to go after Gardner but is so blinded that she doesn’t see any of the warning signs.

Meanwhile, a new medication appears to have a positive impact on her mother and further releases her from the darkness. Nina and Gardner are starting to get even closer and it’s even starting to appear that Nina might get what she wants at last. However, it may also end up coming at a cost.

Freud was the one who first referred to the drug as being a ‘gorgeous excitement’. But it’s also the type of thing that can get very risky, very quickly. Will Nina be able to survive her encounter with the white powder and make it to the autumn season and attend college safely, or will she find that there is a lethal price to pay for her partaking? Read A Gorgeous Excitement by Cynthia Weiner to find out!