A Friend is a Gift you Give Yourself by William Boyle
Believe Me by JP Delaney
The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
Crime fiction set in WYOMING and MONTANA
Ten great books set in NEW YORK
25th October 2021
Ten great books set in New York. New York is an electrifying metropolis, a global hub of finance, culture, and endless ambition. The iconic skyline, featuring landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, is instantly recognisable, symbolising American ingenuity and opportunity.
From the relentless energy of Times Square to the comparative tranquility of Central Park, the city offers a microcosm of the world. Explore world-class museums, catch a Broadway show, or navigate the diverse neighbourhoods, each with its own unique identity and flavour. New York is a place of perpetual motion, a city that constantly reinvents itself, promising every visitor an unforgettable, intense, and exhilarating experience.‘
If You Can Make it Here, You Can Make it Anywhere’ – New York saying.
Here are ten great books set in the city.
A Friend is a Gift you Give Yourself by William Boyle
Thelma and Louise Meets Goodfellas…
After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey ‘Wolfie’ Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.
When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend, she figures Rena is her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand. The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from their demons, no matter what the cost.
Believe Me by JP Delaney
Claire Wright likes to play other people.
A British drama student, in New York without a green card, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands.
When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she’s being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer . . . Or the only decent husband she’s ever met? And is there more to this set-up than she’s being told?
And that’s when Claire realises she’s playing the deadliest role of her life . .
The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
By turns hilarious and poignant, The Dakota Winters is a family drama, a page-turning social novel, and a tale of a critical moment in the history of New York City in the year leading up to John Lennon’s assassination.
It’s the fall of 1979 when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the Dakota in New York City. Anton’s father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown. Before long Anton is swept up in an effort to reignite Buddy’s stalled career, a mission that takes him from the gritty streets of New York, to the slopes of the Lake Placid Olympics, to the Hollywood Hills, to the blue waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and brings him into close quarters with the likes of Johnny Carson, Ted and Joan Kennedy, and a seagoing John Lennon.
But the more Anton finds himself enmeshed in his father’s professional and spiritual reinvention, the more he questions his own path, and fissures in the Winter family begin to threaten their close bond.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This is a New York classic about a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, evocative of this area of New York (Williamsburg) and describes the experience of people immigrating into the city.
“A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life. . . . If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience.”
Downtown by Pete Hamill
Manhattan, the keystone of New York City, is a place of ghosts and buried memory. One can still see remnants of the British colony, the mansions of the robber barons, and the speakeasies of the 1920s. These are the places that have captivated the imaginations of writers for centuries. Now Pete Hamill brings his unique knowledge and deep love of the city to a New York chronicle like no other.
Everyone is Watching by Megan Bradbury
Everyone is Watching is a novel about the men and women who have defined New York. Through the lives and perspectives of these great creators, artists and thinkers, and through other iconic works of art that capture its essence, New York itself solidifies. Complex, rich, sordid, tantalizing, it is constantly changing and evolving. Both intimate and epic in its sweep, Everyone is Watching is a love letter to New York and its people – past, present and future.
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
When she arrives at the famed Barbizon Hotel in 1952, Darby McLaughlin is everything her hall mates aren’t: plain, self-conscious, homesick and convinced she doesn’t belong. Yet when she befriends Esme, a Barbizon maid, she’s introduced to an entirely new, colourful yet seedy side of New York City. Over half a century later, journalist Rose Lewin hears rumours of Darby’s involvement in a deadly skirmish with a hotel maid. A perfect distraction from her own imploding personal life, Rose becomes obsessed with finding the truth about what really happened at the hotel.
The Doorman by Chris Pavone
The new electrifying thriller from the New York Times bestseller and master of the shock ending.
Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favourite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.
In the basement staff room, the life-and-death stakes of daily life are hardly news to the primarily Black and Latino hospitality. So, when the NYPD fatally shoots an unarmed Black man and the streets swell with both protestors and counter protestors, the staff’s concerns are less about the building or its residents and more about their survival – and what justice will look like.
As tensions escalate, Chicky mans the line between the turbulence outside and the oblivious residents living within. But Chicky has his own problems, the kind that have led him to carry a gun on tonight’s shift for the first time in thirty years.
Because tonight, someone is going to die.
A piercing portrait of the way we live now that is also a finely-honed thriller of ticking-clock suspense, The Doorman is about class and privilege in a city poised to boil over, and the ever-starker divisions testing everything New York City likes to believe about itself.
Little Deaths by Emma Flint
It’s the summer of 1965, and the streets of Queens, New York shimmer in a heatwave. One July morning, Ruth Malone wakes to find a bedroom window wide open and her two young children missing. After a desperate search, the police make a horrifying discovery. Noting Ruth’s perfectly made-up face and provocative clothing, the empty liquor bottles and love letters that litter her apartment, the detectives leap to convenient conclusions, fuelled by neighbourhood gossip and speculation.
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
Manhattan Transfer is an “expressionistic picture of New York” (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico’s to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it
Which titles would you add to the list? Remember there are more than 750 to choose from in the New York listings on TripFiction…! Each will transport you to some excellent fiction set in the city. Or you may have your own favourites you would like to include. Leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.
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Have promised myself I won’t go back to the US while Trump is in the White House – but a girl can always read about it!