NYC in Fiction and Fact: Best New Books of 2025 (So Far)
New York City isn’t just a setting. It’s a character. Sometimes loud, often flawed, always relentless. And in 2025, it’s already inspired some of the year’s most talked-about fiction and nonfiction. From atmospheric historical epics to sharp literary debuts and genre-bending memoirs, this list pulls together books that go deeper than Instagram-ready skyline shots.
If you’re looking for books set in or about NYC that are smart, literary, and non-cheesy, this list is for you.
I’ve rounded up both fiction and nonfiction standouts that deserve a spot on your reading list.
Fiction: New York City Novels of 2025 (Jan–June)
The Doorman
Chris Pavone
This is what happens when you combine a murder mystery with a biting class satire. The story follows Chicky Diaz, a beloved doorman at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive buildings.
When a tenant dies under suspicious circumstances, Chicky, equal parts fly on the wall and reluctant detective, gets pulled into the underbelly of Manhattan's upper crust.
Pavone skewers the city’s media circus, privilege games, and performative wokeness, all while delivering a propulsive plot. If you liked White Lotus or Bonfire of the Vanities, you’ll eat this up.
Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
Katie Yee
A sharp, experimental novel with real heart. After a woman’s husband confesses his affair over dinner, she finds herself diagnosed with breast cancer and names her tumor Maggie, after the mistress.
Told in fragmented chapters, lists, and letters, the story is a darkly funny and surprisingly tender exploration of heartbreak, illness, motherhood, and the strange poetry of starting over.
It’s short, gutting, and oddly hopeful. If you appreciate bold structure and voice-driven fiction, this is the hidden gem of 2025 so far.
Playworld
Adam Ross
Set in 1980s Manhattan, this novel captures the weird world of a teenage actor trying to balance elite prep school pressures with life on the stage.
Griffin, the narrator, is awkward, sensitive, too perceptive for his own good, and completely compelling. The book traces his journey through the highs and humiliations of adolescence, while shining a light on the surreal blend of pretension and creativity that defined downtown NYC theater at the time.
Ross nails the voice of a kid trying to grow up too fast in a city that doesn’t slow down.
Early Thirties
Josh Duboff
Called “the year’s best coming‑of‑age novel about adults” by GQ, Early Thirties explores the turbulent lives of two longtime friends navigating modern adulthood in New York City.
Victor, a gay journalist at a magazine, and his straight counterpart grapple with love, loss, abortion, alcoholism, depression, and the fickle media world, elements all too familiar to anyone steeped in NYC’s cultural currents.
The prose snaps with the clarity of millennial nervous energy, but it’s the emotional honesty that lingers: this is a book that understands what it means to come of age in your thirties in a city that both elevates and exhausts.
Mothers and Sons
Adam Haslett
Haslett’s latest is a deep, layered family drama that touches on trauma, immigration law, and forgiveness. Peter, a burned-out immigration lawyer in New York, takes on a complex asylum case that reopens old wounds between him and his estranged mother.
Told through dual timelines (one in present-day NYC, the other in his adolescence in New England) the novel unspools a hidden history with quiet emotional force.
It’s not flashy, but it’s devastating in the best way. One of those novels where every sentence earns its place.
Great Black Hope
Rob Franklin
This debut has a lot to say and says it with clarity and heat. David Smith is a young, queer Black man from a privileged background: private school, Stanford, summers in the Hamptons. But when his best friend dies and he gets arrested in a drug bust, the facade starts to crack.
Franklin takes us through NYC’s creative class, Black elite circles, and rehab centers, with sharp prose and emotional honesty.
It’s part cautionary tale, part cultural reckoning. If you liked Open Water or Real Life, this is in that lane, but with its own bite.
The Stalker
Paula Bomer
Brace yourself… this is one of the most disturbing, hypnotic novels of the year.
It follows Doughty Savile, a cold-blooded sociopath from an old-money New England family, who moves to New York in the ’80s to claim the life he believes he deserves.
What follows is a descent into obsession, manipulation, and emotional destruction, all set against a vividly drawn city teetering on the edge of moral collapse.
It’s American Psycho without the cartoonish gore; just pure psychological rot and haunting beauty.
Audition
Katie Kitamura
If you’ve read Intimacies or A Separation, you already know Katie Kitamura’s talent for quiet tension and psychological unraveling. Audition is her most intimate book yet and it’s set entirely in New York’s theater scene.
The unnamed narrator is a middle-aged actress preparing for a shadowy role that seems to mirror her real life a little too closely. As rehearsals spiral and a younger actor enters the picture, the story becomes a slow-motion collapse of identity, power, and perception.
It’s spare, atmospheric, and totally unnerving in that specific Kitamura way.
NON-Fiction: Navigating New York City in 2025 (Jan–June)
Taking Manhattan
Russell Shorto
New York’s founding isn’t just a historical footnote but the origin story of American contradictions.
Shorto traces how the English takeover of Dutch New Amsterdam in 1664 reshaped the city and the country. Expect smart analysis of capitalism, cultural collision, and the early seeds of urban chaos.
It’s an essential read for anyone who wants to understand why NYC is the way it is and how it got that way.
Yoko: A Biography
David Sheff
This is the definitive Yoko Ono biography we’ve been waiting for.
More than just “John’s wife,” Yoko emerges as a vital force in New York’s avant-garde art scene, a fearless political activist, and a cultural icon in her own right. Sheff, who knew Yoko personally, cuts through the media caricatures to reveal her artistic legacy and lasting impact on the city.
Whether you’re a Beatles fan or not, this is a fascinating portrait of one of NYC’s most misunderstood legends.
Walking New York
Keith Taillon
This book is for anyone who’s ever walked a city block and wondered what stories are hiding behind the brownstones.
Taillon, a historian and popular NYC tour guide, maps out 12 neighborhood walks that double as time machines. With anecdotes, vintage photos, and urban trivia, it makes Manhattan feel fresh again, even if you’ve lived here for years.
One part guidebook, one part history class, all passion.
New York City Monuments of Black Americans
David Felsen
A powerful guide to public art you’ve probably walked past without noticing.
Felsen highlights 30+ monuments honoring Black Americans across the five boroughs, telling the stories of the people commemorated and the fights to get those statues erected in the first place.
It’s part civic history, part social commentary, and a call to look up and really see the city.
If you’re the kind of reader who searches for “great books set in NYC” and wants something with actual weight, this is your list. These are the books I’d recommend to anyone who loves New York in all its complicated, contradictory glory. And yes, I’ll keep updating this post as new releases come out throughout 2025.
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