Books like The Secret Subway — picked by fans

New York City is all about iconic landmarks! When her husband falls ill from “caisson sickness” during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily Roebling takes on the task of overseeing the massive project. She studies the latest technology of the time in an era when many thought that women couldn’t possibly understand advanced math, engineering, and physics. With illustrations that show step-by-step how the Brooklyn Bridge was built, this book is for anyone who is fascinated by bridges, infrastructure, and true stories about women who get the job done.

Harlem Grown is the story of the beginnings of the Harlem Grown program. The Harlem Grown program is a program that supports and mentors youth through urban gardening.

In New York City there was a vacant lot across from PS 175 full of junk and trash. The author Tony Hillery became part of the PS 175 community and decided to work with the students to transform that 'haunted' lot. Together, Tony and four hundred students made that garden into their own farm, then invited the neighbors to share their adventure.

This first successful project led to an organization of twelve Harlem gardens, sustained by their communities but supported by full time staff. It is a beautiful story of recognizing our ability to create impact and how that can be amplified in community.  

One of my favorite things to do in New York City is to walk around and look at everything. Whether people-watching or admiring the architecture or visiting a museum— there is always something new to see! The city is truly an ever-changing work of art, and art is made up of shapes. Through rhyming text and colorful watercolor and collage illustrations, this book explores the natural and human-made shapes of the city through the eyes of a young girl as she observes the world around her.

Someone once referred to Central Park as the “lungs” of New York City. When the grid plan for the streets of Manhattan was designed it left little room for greenspace. Human beings need nature, and respite from the crowds, so a contest was held to design a park. Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted came up with the winning idea. This lushly illustrated book tells the story of how their Greensward Plan became Central Park— the first landscaped public park in the United States. I love to think about how the two designed the placement of every tree, bridge, and curved path, with the goal of making a place where all the people in the city could enjoy nature— and still do, today! 

Firstly the cover says it all. “The true story of how one baby found his home.” A baby abandoned in the subway is found by Danny, who falls in love with the little guy and convinces his partner to be a foster parent. The couple is broke, but the family rallies with diapers, a crib, etc. I love seeing a gay couple fully loved and supported by extended family and even the justice system. I read this book by myself and smile every time. This is the way the world should be. All accepted and loved. I wish I could have read a book like this to my kids 30 years ago. The book ends with a picture of a real grown-up Kevin and his dads which make the book even more special. The illustrations are fabulous.

Here is an example of a work that leaves no stone unturned, and does the job properly. There is an excellent introduction on the historical signage of the Subway, a proper explanation of why a new wayfinding system was necessary, the most comprehensive history on why Unimark was chosen to improve the signage and all the images you need of how their 1970 'Graphics Standards Manual' was implemented. Shaw rightly explains the move from the Standard Medium typeface to Helvetica and why it superseded Standard Medium and the fate of the original Unimark system.

Welcome to the sweet romance of Isa, a dancer, and Alex, a baseball player, teenagers in New York with very different upbringings. Isa is a blonde, half-Cuban/half white, private school girl from a well-off family that’s falling apart behind the scenes. Alex is Dominican, attends public school, and divides his time between his divorced parents. He’s also a secret poet and leaves his poems for Isa to find on the subway train where they first met. Both have professional sports potential, but the reality is more complicated. The couple navigates challenges with their families and neighborhoods, including mental health and gangs, and you’ll be rooting for them the entire time. The author has a beautiful poem in the Rhyme and Rhythm anthology that I mentioned above.

“I saw a little boy on the street today, and he cried so eloquently that I will never forget him.” Maeve Brennan wrote for the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section as ‘The Long-Winded Lady’ from 1954 to 1968. She roamed the city’s streets, bars, and restaurants, eyes wide open, weaving stories of vivid emotional detail from the most seemingly mundane moments. None of these are too long – in the waiting room concentration can be fleeting – but each sketch engages. Her story of the crying boy ends this way: “He might have been the last bird in the world, except that if he had been the last bird there would have been no one to hear him.”

This is a novel about Italian immigrants struggling to survive in New York City’s Little Italy during the early years of the twentieth century amid the growth of the Black Hand, the precursor to the American mafia. The book is unique in that most of the characters are the author’s actual ancestors and people with whom they had come into contact during that era. Similarly, the grisly central events described in the story all occurred.

It is beautifully written and filled with fascinating historical details. The characters and the descriptions of places and events come alive on the page. Fabiano includes an extensive Glossary of Italian Terms used in the book, as well as a multi-generational family tree. Elizabeth Street makes for very good reading!

This is post-modern crime fiction thematically linked and all with increasingly unreliable characters—because they’re each going insane.

In City of Glass private investigator, Daniel Quinn, goes mad sinking deeper into an investigation about identity. Who is telling his story and can they be relied on? Is it any of these characters who appear: ‘the author,’ ‘Paul Auster the writer,’ ‘Paul Auster the detective’?  Whoosh.

I love this stuff but understand it’s an acquired taste!