Jujitsu Rabbi And The Godless Blonde (2013)

When Dana lands at Penn Station, In Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde, with $20 and the promise of a journalism job, she feels the weight of "everyone else's stories falling like fresh soot from the skyscrapers above." She knows there's no new New York tale to tell — though Manhattan does give her all the glitter and heartbreak that a suburban Pittsburgh girl who dreamed of Truman Capote and Carrie Bradshaw could ask for. But like the martial-arts-obsessed Hasid of the title, her take on being young and smart and emotionally adrift in the city is odd and charming enough to be that elusive thing: a true original. A-