Nice Jewish Books

When Allison Epstein first saw the musical Oliver!, one character stood out—Fagin. He was the only Jewish character she’d ever seen on stage. But when she later read Dickens' Oliver Twist, her excite…

Step into the world of mystery, memory, and meaning with author Saul Golubcow.

In this compelling interview, Golubcow discusses his gripping works, The Cost of Living and Who Killed the Rabbi’s Wif…

Michel may not be the big man on campus, but he definitely rules his 2nd grade classroom in Tehran and all is well in his world. That is, until his family decides to uproot him and brother Saeed and…

In March, Rena Citrin, chair of the Association of Jewish Libraries fiction award, told me (not quite in these words) to get my tush in gear and read Joan Leegant’s excellent short story collection,…

It’s Passover! Time to slurp the soup, crunch the matzah, and make jokes about Moses never stopping to ask directions in the desert. It’s also a great time to speak with Maggie Anton about her latest…

Every year, the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award committee scours the book world for books with significant Jewish content. They look for extra-ordinary writing, accurate depictions of J…

When the Buddhist monk Xuanzang returned to China from India, bringing back precious Buddhist texts, he thought his traveling days were over. But then he finds an intriguing scrap with writing that h…

After her town is carpeted with antisemitic leaflets, ceramic artist Faye finds refuge in her studio and before she knows it, her hands have created the figure of a man. She enscribes all her wishes …

For 100 years the Rosenfelds have been trapped in a time bubble in their tenement apartment on the lower East Side of New York. They can only catch glimpes of the outside world which has no idea tha…

Luna Levi may have graduated high school, but she is far from any kind of path to success. She works part time at a motel in Ottowa to help support her family since neither parent seem capable of it.…

Sharon is surrounded by secrets. It is 1968 and she has been recruited to clandestinely bring Israel sailors, soldiers, and engineers to the French port of Cherbourg. She needs to help support them u…

Genevra Ex is a best-selling mystery author with a major quirk. Instead of inventing new characters, she hires a real-life person to be the main character of her book. The latest hire is a young wom…

Heidi Rabinowitz and I both saw a cartoon from the New Yorker in which one spouse was trying to move a pile of tottering books off the other spouses night-stand. The other spouse yelled in alarm (som…

Whether you play the lottery or not, I think that all of us dream about what we would do if we won a major jackpot. This is what happened to three out of the four Jacobson siblings. Matthew, Laura, S…

Eve is only looking for some shelter from the rain, but what she finds will change her work, her heart, and her life. In a small cave in the Scottish highlands, Eve finds a journal written in as a se…

Often we just want to connect with all the people around us and fix any problems we see. In the Hebrew Teacher, a collection of three novellas, people attempt to do this in very different situations.…

. Annamae lives in New York with her brother and linguist mother. She yearns for connection and feels that someone will show up to take her away to where she is supposed to be. In the meantime, she …

Every year the Research, Archive, and Special libraries division of the Association of Jewish Libraries (otherwise known as RAS) gives awards for excellence in Reference and in Bibliography. Since th…

During the Holocaust, desperate Jewish parents placed their children with Christian families and in convents in the hope that the children would survive the war.  After the war, Jewish organizations …

We start in a familiar place, in contemporary Chicago, where Jennifer, a museum curator, is asked to go to Belarus to create a living installation of Jewish life there before the Holocaust. She invit…