Riverhead | The New York Observer

Release: Becky Saletan Joins Riverhead Imprint of Penguin as Editorial Director

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:55:59 -0500

A statement just went out from the Riverhead imprint of Penguin Group USA that Becky Saletan is joining the team as as Editorial Director, a position from which she will acquire and edit "a broad range of narrative nonfiction, in such areas as science, travel, natural history, current affairs, the environment and food, as well as literary fiction."

Ms. Saletan, who resigned early last month from her position atop the troubled publishing company Houghton...

Why Did Little Graywolf Give Up the Paperback Rights to Their National Book Award Finalist?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:07:08 -0500

Two weeks after their homegrown debut author Salvatore Scibona was nominated for the National Book Award in fiction, Minnesota-based Graywolf Press, which Ben Westhoff of The Minneapolis City Pages recently praised as "one of the best" presses in America, has sold the paperback rights to his recently published novel, The End, to the Riverhead imprint of Penguin Group USA for less than $50,000.

Why did they do it? Wouldn't they have made a...

Author Walter Mosley Leaves Little, Brown, Signs Three-Book Deal With Riverhead

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:26:01 -0500

Prolific crime novelist Walter Mosley, author of the bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series, has left his longtime publisher, Little, Brown, and signed a three-book contract with Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, it was announced today.

According to a press release, Mr. Mosley's first book for Riverhead, where he will be edited by Sean McDonald, will be a mystery novel that centers around an African-American private investigator...

Riverhead to Publish Biography of the Man Who Moved the Dodgers to L.A.

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:53:14 -0500

Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group, has acquired a biography of Walter O'Malley—the man who in 1957 infamously moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles—written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael D'Antonio.

News of the deal comes just days after O'Malley was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. According to Riverhead publisher Geoffrey Kloske, who acquired the book in a preempt from agent David McCormick of McCormick &...

Breakfast at Balthazar

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Dana Vachon, the 28-year-old banker turned blogger turned novelist about town, was not wearing socks. Just loafers. A buttery brown leather pair that may or may not have been Gucci and cocooned his feet to reveal just the manliest hint of hair-sprinkled skin. Set against an outfit of cobalt blue jeans, gold-coin cufflinks, and a gold-buttoned blazer, they perfected the look of a fresh Welton Academy grad who had just arrived for cocktails at...

Events for July 8-10, 2006

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:29:41 -0400

On Saturday, the New York Young Republican Club will join the Astoria / Frank Kenna Republican Club in kicking off its summer voter registration drive at the corner of Ditmars Ave and 31st Street from 11am to 3pm. Tom Suozzi opens a campaign headquarters in Huntington before heading over to campaign at the Riverhead Blues Festival. A charity softball game will be held between Long Island Assembly Republicans and News 12 Long Island in Hicksville. On Sunday,...

Riverhead and Kelo

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 19:24:59 -0500

Riverhead, Long Island is looking to expand—shopping centers, businesses and esplanades—and is considering three proposals from private investors for apparently public use. Currently however, the land belongs to someone. And the town is taking careful steps to avoid using eminent domain to claim it. Yesterday, The Real Estate pointed at a New York Daily News editorial that discussed the modern uses of eminent domain for the construction of offices and factories, rather than...

Lard Almighty! Pig Fat Is Back

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

Ack! Ack! Ack! This is that time of year when the fall trends are being machine-gunned relentlessly into our psyches. Can there be a person alive on the planet who does not know that BLACK IS BACK, and that owning a pair of flat goblin boots is about to become as vital as a pancreas? At the last minute, however, a new, unexpected and highly provocative trend has bolted into the style arena. I’m...

What to Do Post-Rehab? Write a Memoir, Of Course

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 20:00:00 -0400

My Friend Leonard, by James Frey. Riverhead Books, 357 pages, $24.95. James Frey wants you to know he's a real man. A manly man. Perhaps even a manimal. Two years ago, when A Million Little Pieces, the first installation of his unrelenting odyssey into sobriety, was thrust upon the world, James was already proving what a man he was. He kicked his 10-year drug and alcohol addiction just like that, because that's what...

Power Punk: Sean McDonald

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Riverhead Books' big man from Laguna Beach edits James Frey, Wu-Tang Clan, takes up a lot of space

Big, quiet, slightly rough-hewn Sean McDonald, the senior editor and online creative director of Riverhead Books, has become the Zen master of the publishing world. He inspires utter confidence among his peers, exuding a kind of quintessential American self-assurance, understated and direct, large-scale but devoid of grandiosity. Mr. McDonald's first job out of Yale was at Arcade,...

No Sophomore Slump for Garland: After The Beach, Another Winner

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 19:00:00 -0500

The Tesseract , by Alex Garland. Riverhead Books, 273 pages, $24.95.

O.K., so what's a tesseract? No, it's not expensive Italian flooring, nor is it the new Meredith Monk performance piece. It is, as we learn about 20 pages from the end of this complex and intriguing novel, a four-dimensional object-a hypercube-which, when unraveled and splayed out for those of us doomed to live in only three dimensions, looks like an extended crucifix....