The Gotham Book Prize, which each year awards $50,000 to one book that captures the “life, history and culture that makes up the five boroughs,” has released its list of 11 finalists for books published in 2025. The prize, only in its sixth year, has been awarded previously to novelists Colson Whitehead and James McBride, and nonfiction writers including Ian Frazier and Nicole Gelinas.

The finalists include memoir and narrative nonfiction as well as historical chronicles and sharp contemporary novels. Several of the authors have appeared on WNYC’s airwaves to discuss their work.

Taken together, the list reflects the city, its cultural breadth, its artistic life, its race and class dynamics, its social upheavals and everyday absurdities, and the many ways in which writers continue to find New York an inexhaustible subject.

Here are the finalists.

“Born in Flames” by Bench Ansfield

This deeply researched history, subtitled “The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City,” reframes a notorious chapter of NYC’s past.

Ansfield traces a wave of deliberately set building fires in the Bronx and in other U.S. cities in the 1970s, driven not by rebellious tenants but by landlords seeking insurance payouts, and the state policy incentives that drove that behavior.

The book insists that the widespread fires, which were often blamed on residents, were instead tied to what he calls “racial capitalism,” revealing how insurance, real estate interests and neglect worked together to hollow out communities.

Find it here.

“All the Water in the World” by Eirenn Caffall

After climate change floods New York City, a renegade family camps out on the roof of the Natural History Museum, scavenging to survive. The premise of this thriller, Caffall’s debut novel, was inspired by curators who protected their collections during wars.

Kirkus called it “gripping, beautifully descriptive, and likely to stay with you.”

Find it here.

“Garbage Town” by Ravi Gupta

This crime novel takes place against the unlikely backdrop of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island in the 1990s. Unlikely, that is, until you consider the infamous connections between the lucrative sanitation industry and organized crime.

As teenage protagonist Raj Patel and his friends dig into the local dump, they uncover more than they bargained for. Gupta is a Staten Island native (who else would choose such a subject?) who worked in national politics and as a serial founder across education, health care and media. This is his debut novel.

Find it here.

“I See You’ve Called in Dead” by John Kenney

John Kenney’s novel is a darkly comic tale about Bud Stanley, an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own death notice after a drunken night out. It’s a mortal sin for a journalist, but his publication can’t legally terminate him because he’s now officially a dead person – leaving Stanley stuck in a surreal purgatory.

Find it here.

“Audition” by Katie Kitamura

In “Audition,” Katie Kitamura delivers a psychologically layered novel, set in contemporary NYC, that examines the art of performance in life and onstage. The unnamed protagonist, an actress rehearsing a challenging play, meets a younger man at lunch in Manhattan and her life is upended.

This “Get Lit” book club selection on WNYC’s “All of It” was also longlisted for the Booker Prize, and host Alison Stewart discussed it with Kitamura at a live event at the New York Public Library.

Find it here.

“The Gods of New York” by Jonathan Mahler

Jonathan Mahler’s sweeping nonfiction work chronicles the late 1980s in NYC, and its transition from a working-class city to one of “entrenched poverty and extreme wealth.” Mahler argues New York’s change prefigured a national one, as economic upheaval, racial tension, the AIDS epidemic and new political actors from Rudy Giuliani to Donald Trump took the stage.

Mahler’s historical narrative captures how these figures and forces reshaped the city’s civic culture and helped to forge conditions that still echo in urban politics.

WNYC’s Alison Stewart discussed the book with Mahler in September.

Find it here.

“I Regret Almost Everything” by Keith McNally

Keith McNally, a celebrity restaurateur turned Instagram creator and a mainstay of the McNally-Jackson (no relation) bestseller list, reflects on his successes and stumbles in this candid memoir. As in his social media presence, McNally addresses his stroke and slow recovery head on, and details his affection and exasperation with the city’s obsessive food culture.

The book gives readers a behind-the-scenes view of some of New York’s most iconic restaurants and recasts them as social theaters, where ambition, ego and good food coexist.

Find it here.

“Harlem Rhapsody” by Victoria Christopher Murray

“Harlem Rhapsody” revisits the Harlem Renaissance through a novelistic lens. In her research, Murray set out to learn about the unsung women of the cultural movement, and landed on Jessie Redmon Fauset, a writer and editor who was pivotal to the scene.

Fauset’s life inspires the novel and evokes the vibrancy and tension of 1920s Harlem, with cameos from some of the leading figures of the day.

Find it here.

“Night People: How To Be a DJ in 90’s New York City” by Mark Ronson

In “Night People,” music producer and DJ Mark Ronson recounts his experiences in the legendary nightlife scene of 1990s NYC. The memoir dives into the scene’s rhythms, clubs and characters, from underground dancehalls to late-night mixes, capturing the energy that made a legend of the city’s nightlife.

It’s both a personal coming-of-age story and a love letter to a defining era in the city’s cultural history.

Find it here.

“Playworld” by Adam Ross

Adam Ross’ novel transports readers to the New York of the 1980s, and specifically its scenes of artistic ferment and social shift. The protagonist is a successful child actor who is 14 when the book opens in 1980, when a married friend of his parents falls in love with him.

Ross himself was a child actor raised by artists in Manhattan, and so, as he told WNYC’s Alison Stewart last year, the milieu of the book was very familiar to him – though he makes clear that this is a work of fiction.

Find it here.

“1929” by Andrew Ross Sorkin

If the title wasn’t a giveaway, Sorkin’s book revisits the Wall Street crash that ended the Roaring Twenties and precipitated the Great Depression. This indelible moment rocked the global order but was rooted in Manhattan’s Financial District, and Sorkin’s narrative treatment dissects the key players and decisions of the collapse.

For New Yorkers and anyone attuned to the city’s role in global finance, the book situates a pivotal historical moment within the very streets and offices that still define Wall Street’s mythos.

Find it here.

“Turning to Birds” by Lili Taylor

Lili Taylor’s essay collection reflects on her love of nature amid urban life. The actress from “Mystic Pizza” and “I Shot Andy Warhol” is also an avid birder and a board member of the National Audubon Society.

Her book, subtitled “The Power and Beauty of Noticing,” draws on her personal encounters with birdwatching in and around New York, highlighting how even in the country’s dense urban metropolis, New Yorkers can find a way to connect with the natural world.

Find it here.