Books like City on fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece examines the glittering yet hollow glamour of the Roaring Twenties as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby pursues love, wealth, and identity across the social divide.

The Goldfinch chronicles the life of thirteen‑year‑old Theo Decker, who survives a museum attack that kills his mother and carries an art piece that becomes a lifelong obsession, exploring loss, identity, and art in contemporary America.

Middlesex follows a Greek-American family's multigenerational saga, charting the life of its intersex protagonist as they navigate gender identity and the search for belonging.

Cora, a woman enslaved on a Georgia cotton plantation, partners with a new slave named Caesar to flee the South. Their daring escape follows a literal underground network of tunnels that mirrors the perilous journey of countless fugitive slaves toward freedom.

In the orderly suburb of Shaker Heights, a new family’s arrival and a custody dispute ignite tension, revealing secrets, art, and the complex pull of motherhood in a tightly knit community.

Set in 1970s Los Angeles, Daisy Jones & The Six follows the rise and fall of a legendary rock band and its pop‑star singer, exploring fame, love and the hidden reasons behind their explosive split.

Jennifer Egan’s interlocking narratives weave the lives of Bennie Salazar, a former punk rocker turned record executive, and Sasha, a restless young woman, across decades and continents, exploring music, memory and the fragile threads that bind us.

A Fine Balance is Rohinton Mistry's critically acclaimed second novel, set in India in the mid-1970s and focusing on four unlikely individuals who come together in a city apartment during a state of emergency.

In 1973 North Carolina, a college student begins maintenance work at Joyland, an amusement park haunted by an unsolved murder, and finds himself entangled in a chilling mystery that threatens his life.

Katey Kontent, a Wall Street secretary, meets a charismatic banker on New Year's Eve 1938 and is thrust into 1930s New York high society, forming ties with a shy millionaire, a rebellious elite, and a determined widow.

A young man's family falls apart after a violent attack on his mother, forcing them into a world of turmoil and uncertainty.

David Ebershoff’s New York Times bestseller blends 19th‑century Mormon history with a contemporary Utah murder mystery, tracing the violent legacy of polygamy through the lives of Ann Eliza Young and a modern seeker of truth.

Vivian Morris, a 19‑year‑old expelled from Vassar, discovers freedom and love in the bohemian world of a crumbling Midtown theater, only to confront scandal that forces her to redefine what she wants from life.

A Dominican‑American teenager in New Jersey struggles with weight, family history, and an unbreakable love, while his dream of becoming a writer clashes with a centuries‑old curse that haunts his lineage.

James Salter's 'All that is' is a captivating and sometimes devastating labyrinth of love and ambition. A deeply intimate portrait of the emotional and physical experiences of being alive. Set during the golden decades following World War II, the book captures Salter's lifelong obsession with capturing the intimate, ephemeral spaces that all of us hold and leave behind on paper. After serving as a young officer in Okinawa during the war, Philip Bowman returns home to a small publishing house in New York. The frenetic social scene of New York in the post-war era is a backdrop for the story, where Bowman feels at home. However, his enduring love seems to elude him. When he meets a woman who captivates him, Bowman embarks on a journey that he never intended to take. The book is celebrated for its lyrical evocation of a post-war world imaginatively rendered and beautifully written.

A multigenerational family saga of American radicals, following two women—Rose Zimmer, the “Red Queen” of Sunnyside, and her daughter Miriam in Greenwich Village—through the shifting tides of 20th‑century political movements.

Three years after marrying a powerful arms dealer, former operative Sophie Jordan is trapped as her husband turns out to be a psychopath. When undercover agent Malcolm Gunnison is dispatched to extract intel and kill the dealer, Sophie must decide who to trust and whether their growing attraction can survive the danger.

A two‑volume anthology compiling essays, poems, and reflections by African American feminist writers that explore race, gender, class, and intersectionality in the United States.

L.A.P.D. detective Lena Gamble races against time to stop serial killer Romeo, who is preying on beautiful women in Los Angeles, after the brutal murder of a pregnant victim.

American literary fiction by acclaimed author Don Winslow, released in 2022 as a New York Times bestseller hardcover edition.