BIBLICAL FICTION

Water from the Well: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah by Anne Roiphe. 288 pages.

As with Roiphe's well-received novels and nonfiction about women's lives, this creative examination of four biblical matriarchs ably reflects her continuing emphasis on the relationships between women and their children. Roiphe embroiders the terse accounts of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah in Genesis by using her own imagination and by drawing on prayer books, Talmud, Midrash, the Zohar and several collections of legends. The result is a colorful, character-driven portrayal of the women, emphasizing their experiences with their husbands and their children. In each instance, Roiphe follows the biblical practice of depicting highly regarded ancestors with all their foibles and limitations.

The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn. 384 pages.

In this eloquent retelling of the Jewish heroine's rise from orphanhood to royalty, Kohn brings psychological nuance and stately elegance to the ancient biblical tale that is the basis for our holiday of Purim. Along the way we learn about palace life, social customs, sexual practices, the place of women, and war and politics. Kohn deftly fills the gaps and resolves the ambiguities in the Book of Esther with creative storytelling and historical research. As Esther recognizes her strengths and responsibilities and learns the ways of the palace, so do we.

MYSTERY

The Book of Names by Jill Gregory and Karen Tintor. 320 pages.

Discovering an ancient text that reveals for every generation thirty-six secret individuals whose lives affect the fate of the world, Professor David Shepherd learns that all but three of the current generation’s Hidden Ones met unnatural deaths.

NOVEL

All Other Nights: A Novel by Dara Horn (available in large print). 363 pages.

A Civil War spy page-turner meets an exploration of race and religion in 19th-century America in Horn's enthralling latest. Jacob Rappaport, the 19-year-old scion of a wealthy Jewish import-export family, flees home and enlists in the Union army to avoid an arranged marriage. When his superiors discover his unique connections, he is sent on espionage missions that reveal an American Jewish population divided by the Mason-Dixon line, but united by business, religious and family ties. After being sent to assassinate his uncle in New Orleans on Passover, Jacob's next assignment proves even more daunting: marry the feisty Confederate spy Eugenia Levy. What starts out as a dangerous game for both Jacob and Eugenia ends up being a genuine romance, fraught with the potential for peril, betrayal, tragedy, and redemption

HISTORICAL NOVEL

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. 464 pages.

After making the arduous journey over a steep mountain pass, they are welcomed into a small village with warm food and clean beds. They have barely laid their heads to rest when news is received that Mussolini has just surrendered Italy to Hitler, putting them in danger yet again. This opening sequence is a grim foreshadowing of the heart-breaking journey these characters will experience in their struggle for survival.

The rich fictional narrative is woven through the factual military maneuvers and political games at the end of WW II, sharing a little-known story of a group of Italian citizens that sheltered more than 40,000 Jews from grueling work camp executions. Rather than the bleak and hopeless feeling that might be expected, the novel has the opposite effect; it reminds us that just as there will always be war, crime, and death, so too will there be good people who selflessly sacrifice themselves to ease the suffering of others.

NON-FICTION

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. 304 pages.

In Sacred Trash, MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and acclaimed essayist Adina Hoffman tell the story of the retrieval from an Egyptian geniza, or repository for worn-out texts, of the most vital cache of Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. This tale of buried scholarly treasure weaves together unforgettable portraits of Solomon Schechter and the other heroes of this drama with explorations of the medieval documents themselves—letters and poems, wills and marriage contracts, Bibles, money orders, fiery dissenting tracts, fashion-conscious trousseaux lists, prescriptions, petitions, and mysterious magical charms. Presenting a panoramic view of nine hundred years of vibrant Mediterranean Judaism, Hoffman and Cole bring modern readers into the heart of this little-known trove, whose contents have rightly been dubbed “the Living Sea Scrolls.” Part biography and part meditation on the supreme value the Jewish people has long placed on the written word, Sacred Trash is above all a gripping tale of adventure and redemption.

NOVELS

The Zoookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman. 357 pages.

Jan and Antonina Zabinski were the Polish zookeepers of the Warsaw Zoo who risked their lives and that of their son, Rhys, to hide hundreds of people, mostly Jews, in empty animal cages and in their home on the zoo grounds during World War II. In a lyrical and majestic way, Diane Ackerman describes Antonina’s intense connection with animals and nature, her ability to handle life-threatening situations, her husband’s involvement with the Polish underground which included smuggling Jews out of the ghetto, and their survival under extreme circumstances. The couple were recognized as Righteous Gentiles by the State of Israel.

Great House: A Novel by Nicole Krauss (available in large print). 289 pages.

The novel consists of four stories divided among eight chapters, all touching on themes of loss and recovery, and anchored to a massive writing desk that resurfaces among numerous households, much to the bewilderment and existential tension of those in its orbit, among them a lonely American novelist clinging to the memory of a poet who has mysteriously vanished in Chile, an old man in Israel facing the imminent death of his wife of 51 years, and an esteemed antiques dealer tracking down the things stolen from his father by the Nazis. Much like in Krauss's The History of Love, the sharply etched characters seem at first arbitrarily linked across time and space, but Krauss pulls together the disparate elements, settings, characters, and fragile connective tissue to form a formidable and haunting mosaic of loss and profound sorrow.

Nemesis by Philip Roth (available in large print). 304 pages.

In general terms, the novel is a staggering visit to a time and place when a monumental health crisis dominated the way people led their day-to-day lives. Newark, New Jersey, in the early 1940’s (a common setting for this author) experienced, as the war in Europe was looking better for the Allies, a scare as deadly as warfare. The city has been hit by an epidemic of polio. Of course, at that time, how the disease spread and its cure were unknown. The city is in a panic, with residents so suspicious of other individuals and ethnic groups that emotions quickly escalate into hostility and even rage. Our hero, and he proves truly heroic, is Bucky Canter, playground director in the Jewish neighborhood of Newark. As the summer progresses, Bucky sees more and more of his teenage charges succumb to the disease. When an opportunity presents itself to leave the city for work in a Catskills summer camp, Bucky is torn between personal safety and personal duty. What happens is heartbreaking, but the joy of having met Bucky redeems any residual sadness.