Books, Literature & Fiction, United States, Jewish American

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Jenna Blum
Those Who Save Us
by Adult (Hardcover)

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmführer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

Amy Bloom
Away: A Novel
by Random House Trade Paperbacks (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-06-24)

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

Jonathan Safran Foer
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
by Harper Perennial (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-09-30)

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

Elisa Albert
The Book of Dahlia: A Novel
by Free Press (Hardcover)

From the author of the critically acclaimed story collection How This Night Is Different comes a dark, arresting, fearlessly funny story of one young woman's terminal illness. In The Book of Dahlia, Elisa Albert walks a dazzling line between gravitas and irreverence, mining an exhilarating blend of skepticism and curiosity, compassion and candor, high and low culture.Meet Dahlia Finger: twenty-nine, depressed, whip-smart, occasionally affable, bracingly honest, resolutely single, and perennially unemployed. She spends her days stoned in front of the TV, watching the same movies repeatedly, like "a form of prayer." But Dahlia's so-called life is upended by an aggressive, inoperable brain tumor.Stunned and uncomprehending, Dahlia must work toward reluctant emotional reckoning with the aid of a questionable self-help guide. She obsessively revisits the myriad heartbreaks, disappointments, rages, and regrets that comprise the story of her life -- from her parents' haphazard Israeli ...

Anzia Yezierska
Bread Givers
by Persea Books (Paperback)

Persea's 25th anniversary edition of this classic of twentieth-century American literature. More than 250,000 copies sold. Set on New York's Lower East Side during the 1920s, this is the moving story of a young woman's struggle to free herself from the traditional female role in an Orthodox Jewish family and society. Sara Smolinksy, the youngest daughter of a rabbi, watches as her father marries off her sisters into dire circumstances, and she vows to escape this fate. She leaves home, takes a job as an ironer, and rents a room with a door: "This door was life. It was air. The bottom starting-point of becoming a person." Sara's rebellion and her struggle for self-fulfillment-for education, work, and a marriage based on love-resonates with a passionate intensity all can share. In this new edition, the original text is retained; the introduction is updated; and a new foreword is added describing the discovery of this important work and the relationship with Yezierska's daughter ...

Naomi Ragen
The Saturday Wife
by St. Martin's Griffin (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-10-14)

With more than half a million copies of her novels sold, Naomi Ragen has connected with the hearts of readers as well as reviewers who have met her work with unanimous praise. In The Saturday Wife, Ragen utilizes her fluid writing style--rich with charm and detail--to break new ground as she harnesses satire to expose a world filled with contradiction.Beautiful, blonde, materialistc Delilah Levy steps into a life she could have never imagined when in a moment of panic she decides to marry a sincere Rabbinical student. But the reality of becoming a paragon of virtue for a demanding and hypocritical congregation leads sexy Delilah into a vortex of shocking choices which spiral out of comtrol into a catastrophe which is as sadly believeable as it is wildly amusing.Told with immense warmth, fascinating insight, and wicked humor, The Saturday Wife depicts the pitched and often losing battle of all of us as we struggle to hold on to our faith and our values amid the often delicious ...

Shalom Auslander
Beware of God: Stories
by Simon & Schuster (Paperback)

Shalom Auslander's stories in Beware of God have the mysterious punch of a dream. They are wide ranging and inventive: A young Jewish man's inexplicable transformation into a very large, blond, tattooed goy ends with an argument over whether or not his father can beat his unclean son with a copy of the Talmud. A pious man having a near-death experience discovers that God is actually a chicken, and he's forced to reconsider his life -- and his diet. At God's insistence, Leo Schwartzman searches Home Depot for supplies for an ark. And a young boy mistakes Holocaust Remembrance Day as emergency preparedness training for the future.Auslander draws upon his upbringing in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York State to craft stories that are filled with shame, sex, God, and death, but also manage to be wickedly funny and poignant.

Maggie Anton
Rashi's Daughters, Book II: Miriam: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France
by Plume (Paperback) (Release Date: 2007-07-31)

The engrossing historical series of three sisters in eleventh-century France continues with the tale of Miriam, the lively and daring middle child of Salomon Ben Isaac, today known as "Rashi". Having no sons, he continues to teach his daughters the intricacies of the Talmud in an era when educating women in Jewish scholarship was unheard of. Miriam, emboldened by her knowledge and mourning the death of her betrothed, is determined to become not only the community's midwife, but also their mohel--performing circumcisions. As devoted as she is to her chosen path, she cannot foresee the ways in which she will be tested and how heavily she will need to rely on her faith. And when a shadowy new suitor arrives in Troyes, an exceptionally learned and handsome young scholar who struggles with a secret that, if revealed, would expose them both to ruin. Somehow the formidable and independent Miriam must decide if they can forge a life together. Author Maggie Anton brings the 11th ...

Lawrence Rabbi Kushner
Kabbalah: A Love Story
by Broadway (Paperback) (Release Date: 2007-10-09)

Sometime, somewhere, someone is searching for answers . . .. . . in a thirteenth-century castle. . . on a train to a concentration camp. . . in a New York city apartmentHidden within the binding of an ancient text that has been passed down through the ages lies the answer to one of the heart’s eternal questions. When the text falls into the hands of Rabbi Kalman Stern, he has no idea that his lonely life of intellectual pursuits is about to change once he opens the book. Soon afterward, he meets astronomer Isabel Benveniste, a woman of science who stirs his soul as no woman has for many years. But Kalman has much to learn before he can unlock his heart and let true love into his life. The key lies in the mysterious document he finds inside the Zohar, the master text of the Kabbalah.

Laurie Graff
The Shiksa Syndrome: A Novel
by Broadway (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-10-07)

Manhattan publicist Aimee Albert knows a good spin, but she’s the one who winds up reeling when her gorgeous, goyishe boyfriend breaks up with her—on Christmas! For a stand-up comedian, you’d think he would have better timing. But Aimee’s not about to let a man who doesn’t even have a real job get her down. She dusts herself off and decides to seek companionship with a member of her own tribe. There’s just one problem: all the shiksas are snapping them up!So when the very cute, Jewish, and gainfully employed Josh Hirsch catches Aimee’s eye at a kosher wine tasting and mistakes her for a shiksa, what’s a girl to do? Hey, her heart was broken, not her head! Unfortunately, the charade goes on longer than Aimee planned, and her life becomes more complicated than a Bergman film. To make matters worse, Josh and Aimee aren’t exactly on the same page as far as their attitudes toward Judaism go, creating tension in the relationship. But as Aimee begins to discover that ...

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