The most recommended books set in Long Island

The In-Betweens is a memoir about growing up Black and Jewish in 1980s America. Davon Loeb’s prose is so exquisite that it literally made me hold my breath, re-read the most gorgeous lines, rethink the direction of my own writing.

His book is unforgettable and powerful in scope but built on the most banal blocks. I did not grow up Black and Jewish, but I could relate to so many details common to our generation: baggy jeans, boxes of Kool-Aid, high hair, and excessive hairspray. He uses the everyday to build empathy and change the way you will see the people around you. 

This novel pulled me in quickly with its portrayal of a middle-class family hoping to spend a relaxing week in a rented home they could never afford to own. The family’s plans go awry quickly when the owners show up at door wanting to stay there as a refuge from the total blackout in NYC. Adding suspense to witty social commentary, Alam creates a sense that something very bad is happening, without ever describing what that bad thing is. I had a few ideas, but the author outsmarted and surprised me with the ending. I feel he captured a lot about modern life and the anxiety many of us feel about the future. Yet, it was entertaining and made me laugh a few times.  

Terrible things happen to the women in this book, but they all, every single one of them, rock the boat to try and make their own lives. In this retelling of The Great Gatsby that centers the POVs of three women critical to the story (Jordan Baker, Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson’s suffragist sister), we get the story that was always hiding between the lines.

I found myself proud of and mourning the lives of each of these women. I felt furious on their behalf and hopeful that the generations that came after them would reap the benefits of their mistakes and their work. 

Perhaps most surprising to me, I found myself wanting to know these women more than I ever, ever wanted to get to know Gatsby’s world. 

Sarah Langan tells you the story of a crime on Maple Street in layers, peeling back the lives of the residents there. While it may seem like a regular suburb, nothing is quite as it seems. Secrets are almost the lifeblood of the street. With news snippets, dissertations, and articles, along with the traditional narrative, the novel immerses the reader into the world Sarah Langan created. But the most impressive part is how trapped the temperature, the very environment itself, makes you feel. Unable to escape that, even the fairly benign secrets of Maple Street feel heavy.

This is the tale of a writer and reader who share a house. The writer, however, is a reclusive human and the reader a rat longing for a friend. The author’s approach is clever and subtle. And while I’m naturally drawn to books about writers, it was the rat that captivated me. I read this book rather quickly. I had to know if Walter could find his way through the difficulty of loneliness. 

“Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me.”

When I read that first line, I assumed The Wednesday Wars was going to be another shallow story with the typical conflict between a mean teacher and a student victim. But I was wrong. Completely wrong.

The Wednesday Wars will make you smile a real smile, not a teacher smile. It will make you laugh as you learn Shakespearean curses. It will make you cry when a student earns the high praise of “chrysanthemum” from a teacher who is no longer an enemy but a friend. This won’t make sense until you read the book, and it’s definitely worth reading this book.

This is the 1st of two books by DeMille featuring wise-cracking lawyer John Sutton. Set on the ultra-affluent Gold coast of Long Island, DeMille masterfully plays up the romantic tension between Sutton and his wife while dealing with a mafia don who moves in next door. Lots of snappy dialogue and intrigue will keep you turning the pages. 

I recall when Blockbuster Video had a books section they discontinued. I went and merrily bought anything I could get my bookwormy hands on. I found Tom Savage and was never the same. He is one of those authors that everybody should read, but few have. A master thriller writer, he uses so many twists, you never know where the story goes next. In this book, Holly is about to collect on an inheritance from the mysterious Randall family. Set in a spooky mansion, high above Long Island Sound, she discovers that fortune comes at a terrifying price. Wrought iron gates, moonlit nights, a shadowy mansion—this novel hits all the correct notes in an October symphony.

This book was like the tensest and most darkly compelling roller coaster ride that I could not get off until the devastating final page.

Emma Cline is so good at delineating the messy inner lives of young women. In this book, she charts with almost real-time microscopic detail the weeklong meltdown of one pretty, very lost young woman, Alexa, as she perpetrates fraud after fraud on members of a uberwealthy summer town in the Hamptons, as well as their staffers and servants.

I was agog at Alexa’s brazenness, horrified and touched by her obvious unwellness and chilled by her ever-increasing detachment from reality. I feared on every page that her jig would soon be up and beheld the conclusion, at a glittering outdoor party, the way one might stare dumbly at a slow-motion train wreck.

An incredible literary feat of holding the reader in absolute thrall to the narrative from… show more.

The Gate House is a sequel to DeMille’s successful novel The Gold Coast, which I really enjoyed. Who wouldn’t like a tale of seduction, betrayal, and violence set about a Mafia don moving into a wealthy WASP enclave on Long Island’s North Shore.

I found The Gate House to be even better. The narrating hero of The Gold Coast returns ten years later. He’s older, wiser, but no less sly, cynical, and funny. His ex-wife is also back, and despite his thinking that she is more than a little crazy (and maybe a bit homicidal), he’s still attracted to her. To top things off, the Mafia don’s son, now himself the don, is looking for vengeance. The Gate House is full of sex, humor, and ultimately, violence.