Michelle Young Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of 'Secret' Guides Books

Publication Order of Images of America: New York Books

Michelle Young is an accomplished American author, journalist, photographer, and professor.

Her writing and photography have been featured in such places as The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Hyperallergic, Narratively, Town & Country, Airmail, Business Insider, Writer’s Digest, Wilson Quarterly, Food & Wine Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, the Huffington Post, Curbed and The Forward.

Michelle attended Harvard College in the History of Art and Architecture, graduating and then attending Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. There she is a Professor of Architecture. She has also been an instructor at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY.

Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York, an online magazine that focuses on the secrets and hidden places of New York City.

Young is known for writing The Art Spy, which was selected as a Best Book of 2025 by Library Journal, the New York Public Library, Indigo, and Hyperallergic. The book was a finalist for The Marfield Prize– the National Award for Arts Writing and the Lambda Literary Award. It was also longlisted for the American Library of Paris Book Award and the Massachusetts Book Award.

Young is a winner of the Lowell Thomas Journalist Award as well as the GANYC Apple Award. She makes regular appearances in documentaries, on television, and at conferences on history and journalism. She has appeared on the Engineering That Built the World on the History Channel, Stay Here on Netflix, Searching for Secrets on the Smithsonian Channel, 10 That Changed America on PBS, and Strange Truths on National Geographic.

Young has also been a guest on Tell Me Something I Don’t Know on Huffington Post Live and was a primary character in the documentary DINER EN BLANC, The World’s Largest Secret Dinner Party. The author was an organizer of the Jane Jacobs Revisited Rockefeller Foundation conference and has been a speaker at the United Nations.

She graduated from the Juilliard School of Music Pre-College Division and remains a trained classical cellist. She resides in the Berkshires along with her family.

Secret New York: An Unusual Guide is a 2024 guidebook written by Michelle Young. Whether you live in the Big Apple or just plan on visiting, this is an essential guidebook that will show you some of the more interesting places in the city that you might not know about otherwise. Tourists and locals alike might be surprised by how much this book has to offer. Find some inspiration for your next visit or outing with this guidebook that provides fun and unique destinations to check out and enjoy.

Whether you want to hang out in some secret gardens or admire the beauty of a church, see a secret metro tunnel, look at the stars with a telescope, find a Lenin statue, stand where Marilyn Monroe famously had her skirt flown up, or something else entirely, this is the guidebook for you.

This book will lead you to places you may never have expected or been able to find on your own. Want to see a room filled with Earth or find a Venetian palace above an old stable? Find the last tooth of Washington or a special plaque? Get your elephant or bike blessed? Michelle Young’s guide has got you covered.

Craft an afternoon in the city that you won’t forget, get ideas for where to take your friends, or plan out a visit to New York that will make memories that last a lifetime. This book has got it all and shows people a side of the city that they might not have glimpsed otherwise. Check out Secret New York: An Unusual Guide and get an inside guide to the parts of NY that you’ve never seen before.

The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Vallance—A True Account of Her Fight Against Art Theft and Tyranny in WWII Paris is a 2025 book by Michelle Young.

This book has been celebrated and named a top pick by many publications and places. It was a New York Public Library selection for one of the Best Books of 2025, a pick echoed by Library Journal and was picked by Hyperallergic as one of their Favorite Art Books of 2025. It was also a Publishers Weekly pick for Best Books of Summer 2025.

If you love a good fictional work that is set in real historical times, you are most likely going to really love this book. Set in Paris during World War II, this book gets to the bottom of how an unlikely woman made her way into the Nazi leadership in an attempt to save the most treasured masterpieces in the world.

The date is August 25, 1944, and Rose Valland has found herself in a horrible and desperate position. She could see the battle to liberate Paris happening all around her, witnessing it quietly from the windows of the Jeu de Paume museum. It was a place where she had not only worked but spied.

The museum had been co-opted by Nazi leadership and was now the last line of defense for the Germans. Will the curator of the museum be killed off before she’s able to tell the truth, a story that could save humanity’s cultural inheritance?

Based on documents that had not been discovered previously, this book follows along with the actions of a key Resistance spy that is at the center of the art looting headquarters of the Nazis in Paris. Valland has been working as the secret adversary to Hitler and doing what she could to stop him while he was amassing stolen art to feature in a future museum of his own.

Valland has passed on information to the Resistance network and even faced down death during Liberation Day’s final hours. While this was happening, young French soldier Alexandre Rosenberg was making his way to Paris, fighting with the Allied forces who were doing what they could to liberate France. His father was an art dealer for many famous artists, but the Nazis took all they had– their nationality, art collection, gallery, and home in Paris.

This is an incredible work that tells of courage in a difficult time. See how Valland fares by getting your hands on a copy of The Art Spy by Michelle Young today.