CITY · UNITED STATES

Books set in New York City

40.713, -74.006

188 books · 163 authors · 1861–2026

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188 books here

Most-set authors

Stephen King (5) · Jennifer Egan (3) · F. Scott Fitzgerald (3) · Edith Wharton (3) · Don DeLillo (2) · Ayn Rand (2)

Genres

literary fiction (73) · thriller & suspense (22) · mystery & crime (10) · romance (7) · science fiction (3) · fantasy (3) · young adult (1) · adventure (1) · children's (1) · horror (1)

Books set here

Set in New York City (134)

A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe

Mahogany L. Browne

NYC teens in pandemic lockdown

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

primary music industry setting

Aftershocks

Nadia Owusu

Owusu's adult home; the place she is piecing herself together from her global childhood

All Around the Town

Mary Higgins Clark

Main setting, trial and law practice

Americana

Don DeLillo

NYC where David Bell works as a TV executive before quitting to drive across America making an avant-garde film

Amerika

Franz Kafka

Karl Rossmann arrival port

Anita de Monte Laughs Last

Xochitl Gonzalez

Anita de Monte's story: Cuban-born artist rising and dying in the New York art world

Anniversaries

Uwe Johnson

New York — Gesine's daily life 1967-68

Anywhere You Go

Bridget Morrissey

NYC press career story

Around the World in Eighty Days

Jules Verne

Arrowsmith

Sinclair Lewis

McGurk Institute scenes

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

Taggart railroad headquarters

Beautiful Country

Qian Julie Wang

immigrant childhood NYC

Between Two Kingdoms

Suleika Jaouad

Memorial Sloan Kettering; years of cancer treatment and early recovery

Biography of X

Catherine Lacey

Home of CM Lucca and downtown Manhattan art scene X was part of

Blackouts

Justin Torres

Where Jan Gay conducted her queer oral-history interviews

Blue Sisters

Coco Mellors

Where the Blue sisters converge after their fourth sister's death; where they were raised

City of Glass

Paul Auster

NYC where Daniel Quinn assumes fake detective identities and stalks the Stillman family through the streets

City of Night

John Rechy

Times Square hustler scene

Clean Hands

Patrick Hoffman

Manhattan law firm and streets; a stolen phone triggers a cross-city cover-up

Darkfall

Dean Koontz

Voodoo murder investigation

NYC where Lotto pursues his theater career as a Broadway playwright, the central stage for his and Mathilde's 24-year ma

Foundation and Earth

Isaac Asimov

domed city of the future

Goaltender Interference

Ari Baran

Aiden retires, exes reunite

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Julia Alvarez

The Bronx, immigrant life in New York

Joan Is Okay

Weike Wang

Manhattan ICU where Joan works; pre-pandemic and early-pandemic hospital life

Julie Chan Is Dead

Liann Zhang

primary setting, Chloe penthouse, runway show

fractured New Americas 2075

Early 20th-century New York

Memory Piece

Lisa Ko

Three Asian American women growing up in NYC from the 1980s art/tech subcultures to a 2040s dystopia

Misery

Stephen King

Paul Sheldon's home city; he returns here after escaping Annie Wilkes and the novel's closing chapters follow his PTSD r

Misinterpretation

Ledia Xhoga

Albanian translator in ethnic enclaves of NYC; Kosovar and Kurdish diaspora communities

Missing You

Harlan Coben

NYPD detective Kat Donovan, online dating thriller

Monkey Boy

Francisco Goldman

Narrator Francisco's home city and base during his journey

My Name Is Lucy Barton

Elizabeth Strout

Hospital stay, 1980s NYC

New Waves

Kevin Nguyen

Tech startup world; Lucas and Margo's workplace and social lives, 2009–2011

Nobody's Fool

Harlan Coben

present-day Kierce, PI and night-school teacher

Notes from a Regicide

Isaac Fellman

far-future canal city

Oh William!

Elizabeth Strout

Lucy and William's home base

On the Road

Jack Kerouac

start and end of road trips

Play Nice

Rachel Harrison

protagonist home base

Real Americans

Rachel Khong

Where Lily Chen meets Matthew around Y2K as an unpaid intern

Recursion

Blake Crouch

NYPD detective investigates False Memory Syndrome epidemic

Same Bed Different Dreams

Ed Park

Contemporary frame: Soon Sheen lives and works in Manhattan/upstate NY

Skinship

Yoon Choi

Korean American immigrant community; multiple stories set in NYC boroughs

Still Me

Jojo Moyes

NYC where Louisa Clark works for the ultra-rich Gopnik family on Fifth Avenue while finding herself in the city

Stolen in Death

J. D. Robb

New York City (In Death, near-future)

Super Sad True Love Story

Gary Shteyngart

near-future dystopian NYC

The Alienist

Caleb Carr

1896 murder investigation

The Anomaly

Hervé Le Tellier

JFK arrival, US government response to the anomaly

The Assistants

Camille Perri

NYC where overworked assistant Tina Fontana accidentally pockets $20k from a media titan's expense account and becomes a

The Beautiful and Damned

Primary setting - summer hospital and mental breakdown

The Bone Collector

Jeffery Deaver

Lincoln Rhyme crime scenes

The Candy House

Jennifer Egan

primary setting

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

Holden's weekend wandering the city

The Cloisters

Katy Hays

The Cloisters museum in Manhattan — branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — where Ann Stilwell discovers a hidden 15t

The Cobra Event

Richard Preston

bioterrorism attack setting

The Coin

Yasmin Zaher

Brooklyn protagonist navigating identity and money

The Custom of the Country

Edith Wharton

High society New York setting

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Stephen King

Roland's portal destinations

The Drawing of the Three

Stephen King

1980s NYC portal entry

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Dawnie Walton

Early 1970s NYC music scene, Opal and Nev rise to fame

The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand

architecture career setting

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Plaza Hotel, apartment scenes

The Heart's Invisible Furies

John Boyne

Cyril and Bastiaan's life during AIDS crisis

The Hours

Michael Cunningham

Clarissa Vaughan strand, 1990s

The Housemaid's Secret

Freida McFadden

Upper West Side penthouse; Millie lives in the South Bronx

The Intuitionist

Colson Whitehead

Fictionalized alternate-history NYC where elevator inspection is a fraught profession

The Lincoln Highway

Amor Towles

Destination of the misdirected road trip; Emmett chases escaped convicts east to NYC across 10 days of 1954 America

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai

immigrant alienation at the millennium

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Oscar Hijuelos

Cuban musicians in 1950s NYC

The Man Who Saw Seconds

Alexander Boldizar

NYC subway confrontation sparks a global thriller for a man who can see 7 seconds into the future

The New York Trilogy

Paul Auster

NYC is the labyrinthine setting for all three experimental detective novellas in the trilogy

The Other Black Girl

Zakiya Dalila Harris

Manhattan publishing world

The Personal Librarian

Marie Benedict

Gilded Age New York where Belle da Costa Greene curates the Pierpont Morgan Library

The Red Letter

Daniel G. Miller

Gothic thriller backdrop

The Seven Year Slip

Ashley Poston

Manhattan apartment time slip

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End

Adam Silvera

primary story setting

The Tenant

Freida McFadden

the Manhattan brownstone

the friends's NYC years

The World We Make

N.K. Jemisin

New York City as a living entity, avatars defending the city

Triple Sec

TJ Alexander

NYC cocktail bar where the rivals-to-lovers story unfolds

Trust

Hernan Diaz

primary setting; Wall Street finance world

Up With the Sun

Thomas Mallon

Broadway and Manhattan entertainment world 1950s–1980s; Dick Kallman's murder in 1980s New York

Us Conductors

Sean Michaels

Theremin in 1920s-30s New York

Valerie or the Faculty of Dreams

Sara Stridsberg

Chelsea Hotel and Warhol's Factory where Solanas shot Warhol

War and War

László Krasznahorkai

New York City; archivist Korim travels from a Hungarian village to upload an ancient manuscript to the internet in Manha

Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin

mythic NYC across centuries

Worst Case

James Patterson

NYC where NYPD detective Michael Bennett pursues a kidnapper targeting the wealthy elite

You Should Have Known

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Manhattan; primary setting

You

Caroline Kepnes

Guinevere Becks apartment address in the novel

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

The shabby first apartment shared by Jude and Willem

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Where Newland Archer first sees Countess Olenska

Open City

Teju Cole

Pivotal site where Julius reflects on slavery

The Fortress of Solitude

Jonathan Lethem

Dean Street childhood

Manhattan Beach

Jennifer Egan

WWII naval shipyard, Anna dives

Count My Lies

Sophie Stava

neighborhood where Sloane and mother move

Just Kids

Patti Smith

The Chelsea Hotel where Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe lived and found their artistic community

Netherland

Joseph O'Neill

Where Hans moves after his marriage fails

Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok

Garment district sweatshop where Kimberly works

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Kylie Lee Baker

NYC Chinatown during COVID-19 pandemic

Lush Life

Richard Price

Site of the pivotal shooting of Ike Marcus

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Hank Green

Where April May discovers the first Carl sculpture

Brooklyn

Colm Tóibín

Bartoccis Department Store

The Last Days of Night

Graham Moore

Site of high-society mansions and The Players club

Great Jones Street

Don DeLillo

Great Jones Street, East Village NYC — the grubby apartment where rock star Bucky Wunderlick vanishes from fame

Another Country

James Baldwin

primary setting

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer

Where Oskars father died on 9/11

The Submission

Amy Waldman

Site of the proposed 9/11 memorial Garden

Call It Sleep

Henry Roth

immigrant tenement childhood

Night Owls

A.R. Vishny

East Village / Yiddish Rialto on Second Avenue; Grand Dame Cinema and Jewish ghost story rooted in Triangle Shirtwaist h

Soundtrack: A Novel

Jason Reynolds

2000s NYC; teen drummer Stuy busks in subway stations and hustles from Lower East Side to underground stardom

The Witches of New York

Ami McKay

1880 Gilded Age New York where tea shop witches practice craft

Flash Boys

Michael Lewis

Wall Street, center of the high-frequency trading story

Tabloid City

Pete Hamill

Cynthia Hardings distinguished address

Pineapple Street

Jenny Jackson

The Stockton family mansion on a historic Brooklyn Heights street

Deacon King Kong

James McBride

Red Hook, Brooklyn housing project in September 1969; church deacon shoots the drug dealer in the Cause Houses courtyard

The Flamethrowers

Rachel Kushner

1970s NYC art world and underground scene

What I Loved

Siri Hustvedt

Downtown NYC art scene

Red, White & Royal Blue

Casey McQuiston

Chapter 8: Alex and Henry's hotel-room tryst, nearly discovered by Zahra

The Plot

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Key cultural landmark associated with the literary jetstream

The Thieves of Manhattan

Adam Langer

Central landmark for the book-obsessed characters

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid

Underwood Samson Offices

To Paradise

Hanya Yanagihara

The ancestral house at Washington Square; three storylines across 1893, 1993, and 2093

Washington Square

Henry James

Washington Square setting

The City We Became

N.K. Jemisin

Pivotal battleground early in the novel

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

Francie Nolan's tenement streets

The Chosen

Chaim Potok

two Jewish boys grow up here

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann

Site of the pivotal tightrope walk

Also featuring New York City (54)

1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Ai Weiwei

Ai's 1980s art school years and exile period in New York

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Crack epidemic New York, 1980s

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Edwidge Danticat

Sophie joins her mother in NYC; Haitian immigrant community central to the novel

Nora becomes radio star in New York

Clive Cussler The Iron Storm

Jack Du Brul

Bell must stop anarchist attack

Countries of Origin

Javier Fuentes

Manhattan restaurant industry where Demetrio built his career as an undocumented immigrant before deportation

Crazy Rich Asians

Kevin Kwan

Rachel and Nick's home base

Dead Wake

Erik Larson

Lusitania's departure port on May 1, 1915

Don't Forget Me, Little Bessie

James Lee Burke

Bessie flees here after Texas incident

Faces in the Crowd

Valeria Luiselli

younger narrator, Harlem poet research

Anne Berest and Claire Berest

Transatlantic avant-garde

Girl at War

Sara Nović

Ana lives in New York as a college student a decade after the war

Heart So White

Javier Marías

UN interpreter postings

Heartburn

Nora Ephron

Rachel returns to New York

Homeseeking

Karissa Chen

divergent paths in America

Ilustrado

Miguel Syjuco

where the narrator and Salvador's body/investigation are based

In the Country

Mia Alvar

setting of NYC-based stories in the collection

In the Night of Time

Antonio Muñoz Molina

Penn Station arrival; Abel's American exile destination and framing narrative location

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Bardamu arrives in New York before moving to Detroit Ford factory

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

Jo boards at Mrs. Kirke's while working as a governess/writer

Lost Children Archive

Caribbean immigrant neighbourhood; Solo's new life in the US

Love Story

Erich Segal

Oliver's law firm, Jenny's death

Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

City Bird travels to looking for his mother, a poet who disappeared under the PACT surveillance state

Plum Bun

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Angela passes for white pursuing art career in NYC/Harlem Renaissance

autograph pursuit trip

The Book of Collateral Damage

Sinan Antoon

New York framing narrative; Iraqi-American narrator collects the Baghdad catalogue

The Book of Negroes

Lawrence Hill

Revolutionary War exodus port

Origin — rejected by New York Society

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen

Chip Lambert New York scenes

The Dew Breaker

Edwidge Danticat

Present-day setting; the Dew Breaker now lives as a barber in Brooklyn/Queens, hiding his past

The Hooligan's Return

Norman Manea

Exile frame narrative — New York

The Hungry Tide

Amitav Ghosh

future-set frame narrative

The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai

Biju undocumented immigrant kitchens

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab

Contemporary New York City, 2014, Addie meets Henry in a Manhattan bookshop

The Map of the Sky

Félix J. Palma

New York socialite love story

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri

Gogol adult life New York

The Noise of Time

Julian Barnes

1948 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace

therapy sessions with psychiatrist

The Wandering

Intan Paramaditha

one of the wandering destinations

The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson

Destination of George Starling's Great Migration journey from Florida

The Woman in Suite 11

Ruth Ware

Lo's home

This Side of Paradise

F. Scott Fitzgerald

post-college ambitions

West with Giraffes

Lynda Rutledge

Starting point of the cross-country journey after the giraffes survive a hurricane crossing the Atlantic

Wolves of the Calla

Stephen King

1977 vacant lot rose subplot

Fleishman Is in Trouble

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Primary inspiration for the diner in the book

Heart of the punk scene and Alphabet City plotline

Notable locations in New York City

Lower East Side3Williamsburg, Brooklyn3Carroll Gardens2Chelsea Hotel2Ground Zero2SoHo, Manhattan2Wall Street251 Bank Street156 Lispenard Street1Academy of Music1African Burial Ground National Monument1B&H Dairy1Boerum Hill, Brooklyn1Brooklyn Navy Yard1Chinatown1Chinatown, Manhattan1East Village, Manhattan1Eldridge Street1Flatiron District1Fulton Street1Gramercy Park1Great Jones Street1Greenwich Village1Greenwich Village, New York City1