One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over Manhattan's hippest neighbourhood, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into - one way or another.

For the women in Candace Bushnell's stellar new novel, One Fifth Avenue is at the heart of the lives they've carefully established, or hope to establish. There is Schiffer Diamond, a forty-something actress busily proving that women of style are truly ageless. There is spoiled, self-assured Lola, who is determined to launch herself into society and the arms of the right man by clawing a way into the building. Annalisa is the wife of a hedge fund manager and reluctant socialite, while bitter Mindy is married to an under-published writer and has been the family breadwinner for too long. And then there is Enid, the glamorous grande dame and gossip columnist, who has lived at One Fifth Avenue for decades, and sees everything there is to see from her penthouse view . . .