Fiction
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith, 1943
Williamsburg before there where hipsters?! This beloved American classic chronicles the coming-of-age of the bright Francie Nolan in a North Brooklyn tenement in the early 1900s.
Brooklyn Was Mine, Valerie Steiker and Chris Knutsen, 2008
In this collection of essays, scribes from the very literary borough ponder Brooklyn’s revitalizing, gentrifying and ever-changing face.
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem, 1999
This novel from genre-busting writer Jonathan Lethem is both a private-eye murder mystery and orphan’s tale, all from the perspective of a narrator with Tourette’s syndrome.
The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster, 1987
This 1987 work, written by Brooklyn resident Paul Auster, consists of three thrilling, postmodernist detective novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman, 2013
In this smart 2013 novel, journalist Adelle Waldman examines the dating travails suffered by today’s Brooklynites from the perspective of her titular, self-involved antihero.
