Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood and renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives. In Christodora, Tim Murphy follows a diverse set of characters whose fates intertwine in an iconic building in Manhattan’s East Village. In Stephanie Danler‘ s Sweetbitter, a young woman lands a job as a “backwaiter” at a celebrated downtown Manhattan restaurant and starts to navigate the chaotic, enchanting, punishing, and privileged life she has chosen, as well as the remorseless and luminous city around her.