Brooklyn! Just the name conjures up so many images, and countless authors have used it as a backdrop for incredible stories. If you love getting lost in a book that brings a place to life, here are some novels where Brooklyn itself feels like a character.
This book follows Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates from her small Irish town in the 1950s. She heads to Brooklyn to build a new life. Eilis finds work in a department store and begins to fall for an Italian-American plumber named Tony.
She slowly adjusts to the busy city. Then, a family tragedy summons her back to Ireland. There, she must make a choice between her old life and the new one she has started across the ocean.
“Last Exit to Brooklyn” presents a stark vision of life in Brooklyn’s working-class neighborhoods during the 1950s. The book follows characters caught in difficult circumstances, people like striking union workers, weary sex workers, and desperate addicts.
Their daily lives and struggles are shown with raw honesty. It’s a powerful read that doesn’t shy away from the harshness of their experiences.
Lionel Essrog is the narrator here, a private detective who has Tourette’s Syndrome. His unique way of speaking and his tics shape the whole story. He’s determined to solve the murder of his boss and mentor, Frank Minna.
The investigation takes Lionel all through Brooklyn’s streets. He navigates a world of small-time crooks and shady deals, and his loyalty to Frank drives him forward. Lionel’s narration, peppered with his verbal outbursts, makes this mystery unforgettable.
This classic tells the story of Francie Nolan, a girl who grows up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, around the turn of the 20th century. We see her life unfold within her poor but proud family.
Francie finds escape and hope in books and dreams of a better future beyond her tenement apartment. The novel captures her experiences with poverty and family ups and downs. It also shows her quiet strength and desire to achieve more.
Nathan Glass, a retired insurance salesman recovering from cancer, moves to Brooklyn. He hopes to find a quiet place to live out his days and write a book about human foolishness. His plans change when he runs into his nephew, Tom, who works in a used bookstore.
Their lives soon become entangled with various colorful characters, including a young girl named Lucy who doesn’t speak but changes Nathan’s perspective entirely. It’s a story full of warmth, humor, and unexpected connections.
This novel chronicles the lives of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude, who grow up on the same block in Gowanus, Brooklyn, during the 1970s. It paints a rich picture of their complicated friendship across racial lines as their neighborhood changes around them.
Music, especially soul and funk, is woven deeply into the story. Their lives take a strange turn when a ring, supposedly with superpowers, comes into their possession. The book examines friendship, race, and the impact of gentrification.
Sol Yurick’s novel follows a Coney Island street gang, the Dominators (called the Warriors in the film adaptation), after a massive gang summit in the Bronx ends in chaos and violence.
Framed for the murder of a rival leader, they must travel back across the city to their home turf. Their journey through the night takes them across dangerous parts of Brooklyn. Rival gangs hunt them, and survival depends on their wits and fists.
The story was inspired by Xenophon’s ancient Greek account, the Anabasis.
Paule Marshall introduces us to Selina Boyce. She is a young girl coming of age within Brooklyn’s Barbadian immigrant community during the Depression and World War II. The novel explores her journey to understand herself amidst family conflicts and cultural expectations.
Selina grapples with her ambitious mother’s desire to own property (the beloved brownstones) and her father’s dreams of returning to Barbados. Her search for identity unfolds against the backdrop of a vibrant, close-knit neighborhood.
Set during the 2008 financial crisis, this story centers on Miles Heller. He’s a young man living in Florida, estranged from his family after a tragic incident. He photographs abandoned objects, remnants of people’s lives. Circumstances force him back towards New York.
He ends up in Brooklyn, living with a group of squatters in an abandoned house in the Sunset Park neighborhood. The novel connects the lives of these individuals as they deal with loss, love, and uncertainty.
This novel looks at the intersecting lives of three people connected by an unexpected pregnancy. Reese is a trans woman who longs to be a mother. Ames, formerly Amy, is Reese’s ex who has detransitioned and is now the father-to-be.
Katrina is Ames’s boss, now pregnant with his child. Their relationships become complicated as they consider forming an unconventional family. The story explores questions of gender, parenthood, and connection with humor and heart.
Charlie Huston drops readers into the dark, violent world of Joe Pitt, a vampire living uneasily among Manhattan’s vampire clans. In this book, Joe gets pulled into Brooklyn’s vampire underworld.
He’s tasked with negotiating peace between rival factions but gets caught in a web of brutal violence and betrayals. Brooklyn’s shadowy streets provide the setting for Joe’s desperate fight for survival as he uncovers dangerous secrets within the vampire community.
It’s a hard-boiled story with supernatural elements.
Bernard Malamud’s novel focuses on two writers who are the last occupants of a soon-to-be-demolished Brooklyn apartment building. Harry Lesser is a Jewish novelist who has been struggling for years to finish his book.
Willie Spearmint is a Black writer working fiercely on his own manuscript. They are alone in the building except for the landlord who wants them out. Their initial curiosity about each other sours into rivalry fueled by artistic jealousy and racial tensions.
Their conflict escalates with devastating results.
Harlan Ellison’s early novel offers a raw look at youth gang culture in 1950s Brooklyn, specifically Red Hook. It follows Rusty Santoro, a teenager trying to leave his gang, the Cougars.
He finds that escaping the violence, loyalty codes, and territorial disputes of street life isn’t simple. The story portrays the intense pressures and dangers faced by teenagers in that environment.
Rusty’s struggle highlights the powerful grip of the gang and the difficulty of choosing a different path.