Fiction

S. Y. Agnon, Only Yesterday.
The son of an impoverished Polish shopkeeper emigrates to Palestine expecting to find a land of opportunity, but he is led astray by circumstances and always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be.

Aharon Appelfeld, The Iron Tracks.
A man living a migratory life on the railroads of Central Europe collects Jewish antiques and hunts for the man who killed his parents in the Holocaust.

Giorgio Bassani, Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
As Fascism rises in Italy, an isolated, upper-class Jewish family opens their home to other Jews but cannot escape a tragic fate.

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March.
A poor youth who grows up in Chicago during the Depression suffers hard knocks as he makes his way in the world but bounces back.

Stephen Birmingham, The Wrong Kind of Money.
The Liebling family rose from poverty to wealth and struggled to take their place among the elite of New York, but a dark secret may bring everything to ruin.

Magda Bogin, Natalya, God’s Messenger.
The end of the war means the end of Rita the Riveter’s job, so she takes over a palm-reading business on the Lower East Side and soon develops real clairvoyant powers.

Dori Carter, Beautiful WASPs Having Sex.
The significant role of Jews in Hollywood — and in the creation of the idealized celluloid culture of “beautiful WASPs” — is seen through the eyes of a disillusioned screenwriter betrayed by a backstabbing trainee.

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
A Czech artist who needs money to bring his family out of Nazi-occupied Prague collaborates with his American cousin to create a comic book hero called The Escapist.

Henry Denker, Horowitz & Mrs. Washington.
When the cantankerous Sam Horowitz has a stroke after being mugged, he is determined not to like the African-American nurse hired by his daughter.

Alan Dershowitz, Just Revenge.
An attorney defends a man who exacted revenge on the officer who massacred his family 50 years ago.

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent.
Jacob and Leah’s daughter Dinah—briefly mentioned in Genesis when her brothers treacherously killed her intended husband—is brought fully to life and given a story of her own.

Joseph Ehrlich, Sabbath.
A detailed and reverent account of the observance of Shabbat by the family of a humble peddler who live in a Polish shtetl in the early 1930s.

Yehudah Elberg, Empire of Kalman the Cripple.
A masterly character study of an embittered, crafty shopkeeper in a Polish shtetl who by sheer force of will transforms himself from a thief and a lecher into an upstanding citizen and a philanthropist.

Julie Ellis, Glorious Morning.
A woman flees the pogroms in Poland and makes her way to New York, where she has a brilliant career on the Yiddish stage of the Lower East Side.

Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
Nine short stories explore the collision of Jewish law and tradition with secular realities.

Nomi Eve, The Family Orchard.
A family leaves Eastern Europe in 1837 and settles in Jerusalem, where each successive generation adds a unique chapter to their rich family history.

Marianne Fredriksson, Simon’s Family.
A half-Jewish boy raised by Swedish relatives feels set apart from his peers and retreats into a fantasy world until he meets a Jewish boy from Germany.

Karen Gershon, The Bread of Exile.
A teenage girl sent away from Nazi Germany to safety in England makes her way in a strange new country, experiencing discrimination and becoming suspicious of kindness.

Myla Goldberg, Bee Season.
A girl ignored by her family becomes the center of attention when she starts winning spelling bees.

Judy Goldman, The Slow Way Back.
A Southern woman translates some of her mother’s letters from Yiddish and unravels a family secret.

Gloria Goldreich, That Year of Our War.
A girl whose mother died of cancer on D-Day and whose father is serving with the army in Europe is left in the care of her strong-willed aunts & uncles.

Rebecca Goldstein, Mazel.
A Jewish actress in Warsaw begins anew in America, where her legacy of vitality, independence and  storytelling endures in her daughter, a sixties intellectual, and granddaughter, a mathematician.

Allegra Goodman, Kaaterskill Falls.
Three Orthodox families at the summer resort of Kaaterskill Falls are tugged between religious tradition and the secular world.

Noah Gordon, The Last Jew.
A teenage boy who witnessed his father’s and brother’s deaths during the Inquisition hides out in Spain, determined to honor the memory of his family by remaining a Jew.

Joel Gross, The Books of Rachel.
A diamond necklace is passed to daughters named Rachel through generations of a family from the Inquisition to the 20th century.

Ehud Havazelet, Like Never Before.
Ten interrelated stories about a  young man growing up in the 1960s who rebels against the heritage brought by his father from the Old World.

Joshua Henkin, Swimming across the Hudson.
Two young men who were adopted by an Orthodox couple struggle for identity: One discovers that his birth mother was not Jewish, while the other discovers that he is a homosexual.

Allen Hoffman, Small Worlds.
In a small village between Poland and Russia in 1903, a rabbi emerges from his study where he has been secluded and silent for 5 years and conducts the service in shul as if he’d never been gone.

Roy Hoffman, Almost Family.
A Southern Jewish woman and her African-American housekeeper share a bond but must confront their differences in Alabama of the 1960s.

Pete Hamill, Snow in August.
In 1940s Brooklyn, an Irish-Catholic boy and an elderly rabbi learn from each other while dealing with the prejudice of their neighbors.

Paul Hond, The Baker.
Family bonds and race relations are explored in this story of a kosher bakery located between a Jewish neighborhood & a black neighborhood in Baltimore.

Alan Isler, The Prince of West End Avenue.
An elderly man in an Upper West Side retirement home is reminded of his past when a woman resembling a lost love appears and a cherished letter disappears.

Rachel Kadish, From a Sealed Room.
An artistic college student decides to spend a semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where her disapproving, politically active mother lives.

Andrew Kane, Rabbi, Rabbi.
An Orthodox man groomed by his parents to be a rabbi but uncertain of his own desires falls in love with a woman who wants to become a rabbi but can only do so under Reform Judaism.

Terry Kay, Shadow Song.
A Southern man revisiting the Catskills, where as a youth he befriended an eccentric man and fell for a wealthy girl, finds he has a second chance at love and happiness.

Lowell Komie, The Last Jewish Shortstop in America.
A fortyish, divorced father of two, behind on his alimony and child support, builds a gigantic Hall of Fame for Jewish sports heroes on the North Shore.

Joyce Kornblatt, The Reason for Wings.
A Holocaust survivor in Argentina writes down her family’s history for her missing granddaughter, whose parents disappeared into the military’s torture camps during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

Syd Lieberman, Streets and Alleys.
Warm and humorous stories of the defining moments in the life of a man who grew up in Albany Park on Chicago’s northwest side and went on to Harvard and the Peace Corps before returning to his hometown.

Elinor Lipman, The Inn at Lake Devine.
A young woman is determined to do battle with an innkeeper who refuses to accommodate her family because they are Jewish.

Michael Lowenthal, The Same Embrace.
Identical twin brothers are conflicted when one embraces Orthodox Judaism and the other comes out as a homosexual.

Carol Magun, Circling Eden.
An American college student discovers herself during a year abroad in Jerusalem at the time of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Bernard Malamud, The Fixer.
Wrongfully accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy in Czarist Russia, Yakov Bok steadfastly maintains his innocence in the face of coercion and torture.

Rohit Matalon, The One Facing Us.
The story of several generations of a once-grand Jewish family in Cairo, now scattered to the four corners of the earth in the wake of political upheaval and personal tragedy.

Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary.
When the young people in the Orthodox community of Memphis begin to stray, a newly arrived convert to Judaism is blamed.

Maisie Mosco, Between Two Worlds.
Learning of her secret Jewish heritage for the first time, an aspiring actress visits her newly discovered kin in northern England and becomes torn between her newfound home there and a life on the stage.

Gina Nahai, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith.
The lyrical, magical tale of a Jewish woman from the ghettoes of Tehran who began life as a bad luck child and who one day grows wings and flies away from her family.

Lilian Nattel, The River Midnight.
Nine interwoven stories set in a shtetl in 19th century Poland show the same events from the points of view of different villagers.

Amos Oz, Don’t Call It Night.
A quiet, contemplative novel of modern relationships and modern Israel revolving around an older man and his young lover in a small desert town.

Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers.
Low-level bureaucrat Ruth Puttermesser awakes to find she has created a golem and is then elected mayor of New York, but her efforts to create a civic paradise soon go awry.

Belva Plain, Evergreen.
A young girl from a Polish ghetto emigrates to New York, where she becomes a servant to a rich family and falls in love with her employers’ son.

Eileen Pollack, Paradise, N.Y.
A girl who recalls her Catskills childhood as idyllic drops out of college to run the family hotel when her parents decide to sell, but things don’t go as planned.

Chaim Potok, The Chosen.
The classic story of two boys from different backgrounds who form a lasting friendship.

Dalia Rabinovich, Flora’s Suitcase.
A woman copes with her husband’s decision to emigrate to Colombia, where she encounters cultural differences and her three overbearing sisters-in-law.

Dorit Rabinyan, Persian Brides.
In the Jewish quarter of a small Persian village at the beginning of the 20th century, a girl abandoned by her husband awaits the birth of her child.

Naomi Ragen, The Ghost of Hannah Mendes.
When a dying woman’s granddaughters show no interest in their Sephardic roots, her ancestor’s ghost appears and tells her to send the girls in search of an ancient manuscript.

Frederick Reiken, Lost Legends of New Jersey.
A boy growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey copes with the dissolution of his family by perceiving magic in ordinary things.

Mordecai Richler, Joshua Then and Now.
The son of a crook and an exotic dancer overcomes his inauspicious beginnings to become a celebrated television writer, but he is not happy with his life.

Anne Roiphe, Lovingkindness.
A mother is shocked when her 22-year-old daughter calls from Israel and announces that she has joined an extreme right-wing Orthodox Jewish group and will be seeking an arranged marriage.

Thane Rosenbaum, Second Hand Smoke.
The son of Holocaust survivors grows up to become a Nazi hunter and discovers that he has a brother who was left behind in Poland.

Henry Roth, Call It Sleep.
The son of Yiddish speaking immigrants growing up in a ghetto in on the Lower East Side of New York seeks his own identity as the old way of life gives way in the New World.

Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint.
An irreverently funny account of a modern man torn between the repressive, traditional values of his Jewish mother, his passion for WASP women, and his desire to create himself.

Bernhard Schlink, The Reader.
A teenage boy in Germany who has an affair with an enigmatic older woman later learns that she was guilty of an unspeakable crime during the Holocaust.

Meir Shalev, The Loves of Judith.
Between the world wars, a new housekeeper arrives on a farm in Palestine and is pursued by three men.

Gerald Shapiro, Bad Jews and Other Stories.
Humorous but heartfelt tales of people who have drifted away from their religion but find themselves turning to faith in moments of duress.

Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman & the Railroad Stories.
Humorous and keenly observant stories of life in eastern European shtetls at the turn of the 20th century, including the basis for Fiddler on the Roof.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories.
Skillfully wrought stories replete with profound insights on human nature, including the classic “Gimpel the Fool.”

Katie Singer, Wholeness of a Broken Heart.
When the mother with whom she had shared a close bond suddenly shuts her out of her life, a daughter seeks answers in her family’s previous generations of women.

Cameron Stracher, The Laws of Return.
The son of parents who have shed their religion and traditions seeks his own identity.

Aryeh Lev Stollman, The Far Euphrates.
This story of an isolated boy growing up in 1960s Ontario raises questions of how we can find meaning in a post-Holocaust world; how we define the notions of home and family; and what our responsibilities are to ourselves and to one another.

Elizabeth Swados, Flamboyant.
A sheltered Orthodox woman takes a teaching job at a Manhattan high school that is a refuge for gay and lesbian teens and forms an unlikely bond with a student called Flamboyant.

Leon Uris, Mila 18.
The dramatic account of the men and women in the Warsaw ghetto who, despite overwhelming odds, defied the German army with homemade weapons and won the respect of the world.

Elie Wiesel, The Fifth Son.
When a man discovers that his father has been haunted for years by his role in the murder of a brutal SS officer who is really still alive, he sets out to complete his father's act of revenge.

Herman Wouk, The Hope; The Glory.
The epic saga of Israel’s history from the beginning of nationhood in 1948 to modern times.

A. B. Yehoshua, The Lover.
The tensions in Israel following the Yom Kippur War between Arabs & Jews, Ashkenazi & Sephardi, and men & women are explored in this story of a man seeking his wife’s lover.

Anzia Yezierska, How I Found America.
Stories chronicling the lives of immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side, their economic hardships and the difficulties of assimilation.

Simone Zelitch, Louisa.
In this retelling of the story of Ruth, a woman who was the daughter of Nazis and the wife of a Jew is despised by the mother-in-law she saved from the Holocaust and the people in her new home in Israel.

Benjamin Zucker, Blue.
In this highly original work, the main story of a New York City gem merchant seeking the origins of a family heirloom is expanded and accentuated by marginal annotations and rich illustrations.
 

Mysteries

Batya Gur, The Saturday Morning Murder.
A Jerusalem detective investigates the murder of a prominent psychiatrist. First in a series.

Susan Isaacs, Red, White and Blue.
An FBI agent in Wyoming discovers that he is related to a Jewish reporter from New York as they investigate a series of anti-Semitic crimes.

Michael Kahn, Bearing Witness.
An attorney files an age-discrimination lawsuit against a large corporation & uncovers a trail of dirty money going back to the Nazi era. Part of a series.

Sharon Kahn, Fax Me a Bagel.
The widow of a rabbi who died in a mysterious hit-and-run fears that a poisoned bagel may have been meant for her. First in a series.

Faye Kellerman, The Ritual Bath.
An L.A. detective investigates a rape at the ritual bath of an Orthodox community. First in a series.

Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late.
When Rabbi Small is implicated in a murder, he helps the town’s Catholic police chief solve the crime. First in a series.

Rochelle Krich, Blood Money.
An L.A. detective investigating an elderly man’s death uncovers a web of deceit leading back to the Holocaust. Part of a series.

Ronald Levitsky, The Love That Kills.
A civil rights lawyer who despises his client’s neo-Nazi views nevertheless believes him innocent of a Vietnamese woman’s murder. First in a series.

David Liss, A Conspiracy of Paper.
In 18th century London, a thief-taker is hired to investigate a murder that may be related to his own father’s death.

Mystery Midrash.
An anthology of Jewish mystery and detective stories by such authors as Michael Kahn, Stuart Kaminsky, Faye Kellerman & Ronald Levitsky.

Robert Rosenberg, Crimes of the City.
During the chaos of the intifada, a Jerusalem detective must solve the murders of two Russian Orthodox nuns. First in a series.

Richard Zimler, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon.
In the days leading up to the infamous Lisbon massacre of 1506, a young manuscript illustrator is determined to discover who murdered his uncle, a well-known kabbalist.