In mid-August, sometimes it's easier to appreciate the idea of living in New York City more than its sweaty, humid reality.
Thankfully, the New York Public Library offers us a helping hand. Recognizing that a good NYC-based novel provides flushed city dwellers with all the sights, sounds and intrigue of New York neighborhoods without requiring residents to roam around a single city block, NYPL staff have mapped some of the best novels set right in your neighborhood.
Here are some great novels that take place in New York City neighborhoods. Head to the nearest New York Public Library branch and pick up a copy today:
Financial District
American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis
World Trade Center
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
Chinatown
Shoplifting from American Apparel, Tao Lin
The Bowery/Five Points
The Gods of Gotham, Lyndsey Faye
Lower East Side
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
SoHo
The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner
Alphabet City
Call It Sleep, Henry Roth
Greenwich Village
Great Jones Street, Don Delillo
Washington Square, Henry James
Flatiron District
Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
Chelsea
Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
Midtown
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Times Square
Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
Central Park
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Upper East Side
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Upper West Side
Open City, Teju Cole
Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
Harlem
Push, Sapphire
Jazz, Toni Morrison
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
Williamsburg
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
The Chosen, Chaim Potok
Bedford-Stuyvesant
Brown Girl, Brownstones, Paule Marshall
Downtown Brooklyn
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
Brooklyn Heights
10:04: A Novel, Ben Lerner
Boerum Hill
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
Flatbush/Ditmas Park
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
Sophie's Choice, William Styron
Sunset Park/Bay Ridge
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr.
Flushing
Native Speaker, Chang-rae Lee
Woodside
We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas
South Bronx
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
West Bronx/Fordham
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
Port Richmond
Small Mercies, Eddie Joyce
For more novels or to check out the NYPL's map of their book list, click here.