Celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month Through FictionLike this list

47 items

• Hope

  a Novel

  Ridker, Andrew,

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  The year is 2013 and the Greenspans are the envy of Brookline, Massachusetts, an idyllic (and idealistic) suburb west of Boston. Scott Greenspan is a successful physician with his own cardiology practice. His wife, Deb, is a pillar of the community…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Don't Forget to Write

  a Novel

  Confino, Sara Goodman,

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  In 1960, a young woman discovers a freedom she never knew existed. When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Long Island Compromise

  Brodesser-Akner, Taffy,

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  In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Next Stop

  a Novel

  Resnick, Benjamin,

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  A gripping and hauntingly prescient novel that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life after a black hole consumes Israel, setting off a chain of global anomalies plunging the world into a time of peril and miracles.

• A Reason to See You Again

  a Novel

  Attenberg, Jami,

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  The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. After the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn. Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Florence Adler Swims Forever

  Beanland, Rachel,

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  Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Promise of a Normal Life

  a Novel

  Gibson, Rebecca Kaiser,

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  The Promise of a Normal Life is a poet’s debut novel, so evocative of life as lived that it transports you to a time and place you can practically see, touch, and feel. The unnamed narrator is a fiercely observant, introverted Jewish-American girl…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• As Close to Us as Breathing

  a Novel

  Poliner, Elizabeth,

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  In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named "Bagel Beach," has long been a summer destination for Jewish families. Here sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Family Morfawitz

  Turtel, Daniel H.,

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  When Hadassah Morfawitz flees Nazi Germany with her siblings and arrives in New York, she is determined to turn the city into her own Mount Olympus--at any cost. In choosing orphaned concentration camp survivor Zev Kretinberg as her husband and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Dinner Party

  a Novel

  Janowitz, Brenda,

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  In Brenda Janowitz's The Dinner Party, long forgotten memories come to the surface. Old grievances play out. And Sylvia Gold has to learn how to let her family go. This Passover Seder is not just any Passover Seder. Yes, there will be a quick…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Shot in the Dark

  a Novel

  Lee, Victoria, 1989-

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  Elisheva Cohen has just returned to New York after almost a decade away. The wounds of her past haven’t fully healed, but four years of sobriety and a scholarship to study photography with art legend Wyatt Cole are signs of good things to come,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Hotel Cuba

  a Novel

  Hamburger, Aaron

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  Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Matchmaker's Gift

  Loigman, Lynda Cohen,

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  A scrappy Jewish teenager newly arrived in 1920s New York struggles to follow her calling as a matchmaker––seventy years later, her cynical divorce-attorney granddaughter realizes she has very inconveniently inherited the family gift for matching…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Floating Feldmans

  Friedland, Elyssa,

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  Sink or swim. Or at least that's what Annette Feldman tells herself when she books a cruise for her entire family. It's been over a decade since the Feldman clan has spent more than 24 hours under the same roof, but Annette is determined to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Kantika

  a Novel

  Graver, Elizabeth, 1964-

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  A dazzling Sephardic multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home. A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bread Givers

  Yezierska, Anzia, 1880?-1970,

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  A timeless American novel about an immigrant girl growing up on the Lower East Side who dares to challenge her Orthodox Jewish family’s narrow conceptions of a woman’s place in the world. The youngest of four daughters in a family that left Poland…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Boston Girl

  a Novel

  Diamant, Anita,

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  A moving portrait of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston, a view of a complicated life in twentieth century America that's a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.

• Before All the World

  Rothman-Zecher, Moriel,

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  A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old. I do not believe that all the world is darkness. In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Family Markowitz

  Goodman, Allegra

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  In this beloved collection of linked short stories, Allegra Goodman writes with wit and compassion about three generations of Markowitzes: Rose, the displaced, cantankerous matriarch; her devoted son, Henry, an aesthete living abroad; his younger…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An Old Man's Game

  An Amos Parisman Mystery

  Weinberger, Andy,

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  When a controversial celebrity rabbi drops dead over his matzoh ball soup at the famed Canter's Deli in Los Angeles, retired private eye Amos Parisman— a sixtyish, no-nonsense Jewish detective who lives with his addled wife in Park La Brea—is hired…Read moreRead more of this annotation