Novel set on Jeju and in Seoul
Ten Great Books set in New York State
16th August 2023
Ten Great Books set in New York State. Within the vast and diverse landscapes of New York State there are many locations for great fiction. Books of many genres are set in the area – here are ten of our favourites.
Black Reed Bay by Rod Reynolds
Don’t trust ANYONE…
When a young woman makes a distressing middle-of-the-night call to 911, apparently running for her life in a quiet, exclusive beachside neighbourhood, miles from her home, everything suggests a domestic incident.
Except no one has seen her since, and something doesn’t sit right with the officers at Hampstead County PD. With multiple suspects and witnesses throwing up startling inconsistencies, and interference from the top threatening the integrity of the investigation, lead detective Casey Wray is thrust into an increasingly puzzling case that looks like it’s going to have only one ending…
And then the first body appears…
Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman
Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong. When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide.
The first few hours following Nora’s devastating discovery pass for her in a blur of numbness and disbelief. Then, a disturbing awareness slowly settles in: Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life. Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them.
Unraveling her late husband’s final days, Nora searches for an explanation-but finds a bewildering resistance from Brendan’s best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his brittle mother. It quickly becomes clear to Nora that she is asking questions no one wants to answer. For beneath the soft cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep its presence unknown . . . and its darkest secrets hidden.
The Beach Holiday by Isabelle Broom
A somebody. A nobody.
A love story waiting to be written . . .
All aspiring novelist Honor has ever wanted is to be successful. It’s the only way she can impress the father who abandoned her, the boyfriend who gave up on her, and the nagging voice in her head that tells her she’s not good enough.
Still, wanting to tell a story is not the same as having a story to tell, and Honor knows she needs to find a new source of inspiration.
When she’s invited to spend a summer abroad in The Hamptons, Honor realises it could be the dream setting for a book, especially when a chance encounter provides her with the perfect leading man.
But blurring fact and fiction is a dangerous game, and Honor soon discovers that writing her way to success might come at the expense of her own happy ever after.
We Are The Brennans by Tracey Lange
Some secrets you keep from your family. And some secrets you keep for your family.
When twenty-nine-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk-driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it’s not easy. She deserted them all – and her high school sweetheart – five years before, with little explanation, and they’ve got questions.
Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the East Coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all of their secrets – secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes-and ultimately find a way forward, together.
Eden Close by Anita Shreve
Andrew, an advertising executive in his mid-30s, returns to his hometown in upstate New York for his mother’s funeral. He does not intend to stay in the slow rural backwater he left seventeen years before. But the dreams and memories persist and in the darkened farmhouse he relives that hot, bloody night when Eden Close was blinded – by the same gun that killed her father. The enigmatic Eden had been Andrew’s childhood companion. Together the two roamed summer cornfields, smoked their first forbidden cigarettes, skated, fished and fought until the tomboy turned temptress – then their friendship ended. Now, despite warnings, Andrew is drawn again to this lost, blind girl of his youth, drawn to save her from the cruel neglect she has endured for seventeen sightless years without him. But first he must discover the grisly truth about that night…
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
After Astrid Strick – a widowed, 68-year-old mother of three living in upstate New York – witnesses an accident, she resolves to live more honestly. Starting with the mistakes she made in raising her family.
But are her kids, tangled in their own messy adult lives, really ready to be treated like grown ups
Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum
The families on the island have been vacationing here for years; the Weinsteins, the Metzners, the Grobels – and unlucky in love Rachel Woolf.
Outsiders aren’t welcome. That is except for Robert, the handsome new tennis coach, who some people are going out of their way to make very welcome . . .
But the problem when everyone knows everyone is that secrets can’t stay secret forever.
And when a body is found face-down beneath the boardwalk, they realise that maybe one of them is worse than they thought . . .
Stylish, subversive and darkly comedic, this is a story of what’s lurking under the surface of picture-perfect lives in a place where everyone has something to hide.
Every Vow You Break by Julia Crouch
The Wayland family – Lara and Marcus and their three children – leave England to spend a long, hot summer in Trout Island, Upstate New York. Lara, still reeling from an abortion that Marcus insisted on, hopes the summer away from home will give her time to learn to love her husband again.
A chance meeting at a party reacquaints the family with Marcus’s old actor friend, Stephen, with whom Lara once had an affair. Lara feels herself drawn towards Stephen and they pick up their secret relationship where they left off. Lara knows she’s playing a dangerous game: what she doesn’t know is that it’s also a deadly one.
Orient by Christopher Bollen
Suspenseful and haunting, Bollen’s thrilling novel Orient is a provocative take on the troubled American dream, in the vein of Lionel Shriver or AM Homes.
At the eastern edge of Long Island, far from the hustle of New York City, stands Orient, a village that has been home to a few families for hundreds of years and is now – reluctantly – opening up to wealthy weekenders and artists from the city.
On the last day of summer, a young man with a hazy past appears, and, not long after his arrival comes a series of events that shatters the peace in this isolated community. A strange, twisted creature washes ashore on the Sound and, soon after, a human corpse is found floating in the water. An elderly woman dies in bizarre circumstances and a house fire erupts out of nowhere. Fear and suspicion mount until everyone’s secrets threaten to be exposed. But who is Mills Chevern? What is his real name and why is he here? As all eyes shift towards the orphan drifter, Mills elicits the support of Beth Shepherd, an Orient native who is hiding a secret of her own.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
1920s, Long Island. In part a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means–and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout.
We hope you enjoy our selection of books set in New York State. If we’ve missed any of your favourites, please add them in the Comments below.
Tony for the TripFiction team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)
Please wait...
ugh! Your lists always frustrate me. How can you write a list of New York novels and not include anything by Richard Russo? Seriously. I feel like this list was made by a middle schooler.
1 Comment
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. Do our lists always frustrate you? That is so sad to hear. New books come along all the time and we like to reflect new developments in publishing as well as highlighting the classics – publishing is always on the move