Endless amounts of books use New York City as a setting, from “The Power Broker” to “American Psycho.” What do they have in common aside from the five boroughs? Often nothing. New York as blank slate (or Rorschach test) is what makes its literature so compellingly diverse.
What does New York look like on the page in 2026? These NYC books feature strange music, murder, prison, dancing, fame and, of course, the subway. Take a look at recommendations from Gothamist writers for New York books from the first half of the year, and check in on our friends at "All Of It’s" Summer Reading Challenge, too.
"Don’t Step Into My Office" by David Fishkind
A man with a drug problem and some mental health issues witnesses a murder on the beach in Coney Island. He tries to forget about it, but it haunts him after he cleans up his act and marries a rich woman with a family house in the Hamptons.
The book bops back and forth between the city and the Hamptons as the man, Jacob Garlicker, tries to figure out what the mystery of his missing parents may have to do with the crime. He also keeps coming across desk plaques that say “Step into my office.”
A totally strange, surreal, compelling and very weird book that is dense with plot but would be just as good if nothing at all happened and we just followed Jacob around as he putzed through the city. It’s also unexpectedly delightful for a book with so many references to doing ketamine. — Matthew Schnipper
"No New York" by Adele Bertei
The book borrows its name from a compilation of no wave music released in 1978. No wave was was a freeform rock-adjacent genre disinterested in traditional song structures. Bertei played on the album as part of the group the Contortions, who have a cult following. Her book is a history of the women in the Downtown music scene of the late '70s and early '80s, from Nan Goldin to Lydia Lunch to Madonna, with many lesser known figures who bolstered culture. As Bertei makes clear, it was women doing so much of the work while often the front men were being jerks and getting undeserved attention. A necessary corrective to history. — Matthew Schnipper
"The Hill" by Harriet Clark
The protagonist of “The Hill,” Suzanna, is being raised in Manhattan by her grandparents after her mother is jailed for life for her participation in a bank robbery that turned into a murder. Much of the book takes place while Suzanna visits her mom in prison. The book has real-world roots, as author’s mother Judith Clark was in prison for a similar crime as the mother in the book. She was part of the Weather Underground. She was released from prison in 2019 after nearly 40 years behind bars.
Though the book is New York-based, Suzanna is not always out in the city. But there are a few scenes in Central Park where she is just hanging out with her friends, lying on the grass. Clark writes these scenes really hazily, like fading memories. She’s facing down adulthood, knowing it’s going to whisk her, though she’d rather it not. A beautiful book that unfurls slowly, like childhood, a welcome contrast to the rapid pace of the city itself. —Matthew Schnipper
“Famesick” by Lena Dunham
The latest memoir from “Girls” creator Lena Dunham recounts her experience living in New York City as a twentysomething, which might be relatable if she wasn’t, well, running an HBO show. Despite her growing fame and fortune, Dunham still experiences many of the growing pains typical of young women coming of age in New York. She has a very questionable romantic rebound with an unstable man in Williamsburg. She moves back in with her parents. She catches her friends all hanging out without her, and wonders what she did wrong. And, all this time, she is creating the show that became one of the defining portraits of millennials in NYC. The memoir is juicy, well-written and introspective about how fame and money change a person. — Jordan Lauf
"Last Night in Brooklyn" by Xochitl Gonzalez
Xochitl Gonzalez has dedicated her writing to capturing the Brooklyn she grew up in, which is starting to disappear as gentrification alters neighborhoods. Her latest novel captures Fort Greene on the brink of massive change as more wealthy white people begin moving to the neighborhood.
Set just ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, the novel follows a woman named Alicia who begins spending a lot of time with her charismatic neighbor, an up-and-coming Puerto Rican fashion designer named La Garza. As Alicia is pulled further into La Garza’s orbit, she realizes that the designer is having an affair with Alicia’s married cousin, a wealthy banker named Devon. The novel takes inspiration from “The Great Gatsby” to highlight the ways wealth and ambition can corrupt.
No one writes about Brooklyn quite like Gonzalez, with her sharp eye for detail, sense of humor, and nuanced examinations of how race and class intersect in the lives of New Yorkers trying to “make it.” — Jordan Lauf
“Scattered Steel: The Afterlife of the World Trade Center” by Samuel and Max Holleran
The impact of the 9/11 attacks on humanity’s cultural memory and Downtown Manhattan’s built environment have been exhaustively documented — but what happened to the literal remains of the towers themselves? A new book thoroughly examines this question, tracing mangled concrete and crumpled steel from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Christchurch, New Zealand, exploring how individuals and institutions across the 50 states and beyond have utilized recovered remnants of the World Trade Center.
It is an academic cataloging made moving by the nature of its topic, but it doesn’t simply list: The authors go into granular detail telling of the process by which fragments and shards were shipped, sculpted and installed as art. Rarely has an analytical tracing of where damaged construction material ended up felt like a testament to the strange, heart-wrenching earnestness of death rituals and enshrining of collective experience. (To be released Aug. 15.) — Hannah Frishberg
“Elevated Landscapes” by Dave Mandl
The view from an above-ground subway can vary from jaw-dropping to drab. Dave Mandl would know — he’s ridden every stretch of elevated subway in Brooklyn and documented the view. The result paints a picture of Kings County as seen by its most consistent traveler, a train’s perspective of the borough. It’s mostly rooftops and empty lots, cemeteries, backyards and a few sweeping landscapes of highway, high-rise and sky. Shot in winter, the images are bereft of people, full of solitude and implicit movement. While the portrait of Brooklyn isn't always flattering, it's consistently honest. — Hannah Frishberg
