City on Fire: A novel

An Amazon Best Book of October 2015: Find a comfortable chair, a lamp, and mix yourself a Manhattan, because this book is going steal your time and throw you into the swirling mayhem of 1970s New York City – where the lives of the wealthy, punks, artists, cops, anarchists, and fleeing teens collide – and you are not going to want it to end. Garth Risk Hallberg has not only written one of the most anticipated debuts of the year, but has done so with enormous ambition and giddy success. Told through multiple perspectives, Hallberg’s novel reveals a vast and varied web of characters whose lives intertwine around a shooting and the New York City blackout of 1977. This is a novel of America, of hopes and dreams, of old money a la F. Scott Fitzgerald, of families and rebellion and how “no matter what you deserve, how far you run, your fate stays stuck to your heels.” Rendered with cinematic detail and crisp-cracking prose, Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire is electric. --Al Woodworth