From the streets of modern Israel to the barrooms of Brooklyn to a suburban New England synagogue, the characters in these 10 stories search for love and acceptance in a world scarred by loss and loneliness. In "The Madonna of Temple Beth Elohim," an Iraq war veteran sees a vision of the Virgin Mary on the eve of the Jewish high holidays. In "My Darling Sweetheart Baby," a working-class drunk waits on his stoop for his disability check and the courage to proclaim his love to a local prostitute....
From the bestselling author of The Dovekeeperscomes a love story about one of history's most captivating 'invisible' women: Rachel, the mother of Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. Growing up on the idyllic island of St Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their tight-knit refugee community of Jews who escaped the European Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for refusing to live by the rules. But Rachel's fate is not in he...
The Necklace tells the stories of three women, each with a dangerous secret. There is 80-year-old mafia widow Kate Brady, determined that her secret will die with her--beautiful, blond and famous Andrea Pryor is being blackmailed for her secret--and 18-year-old Marianne Woodsman whose secret is hidden in her family's Park Avenue penthouse. Marianne runs for her life from her dangerously dysfunctional family, through a homeless shelter and a brothel until her story intertwines with Kate's and And...
The dramatic historical crime drama of Kate Brady continues as she joins the FBI, falls in love with an agent and goes undercover to bring down a major crime family. Jewish mafia godfather Ben Gold is dead and the file is closed as far as law enforcement is concerned. His widow is attending college and living on the millions of dollars of ill-gotten gain that Ben had left her, and trying to put the life of a moll behind her. But once again, even from beyond the grave, Ben Gold drags her back int...
Oliver Vice, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2.Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession, as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history. At the heart o...
London, 1958. When Juliet Montague's husband disappears, so does she. As far as her Jewish community is concerned, she is invisible. Until, on her thirtieth birthday, she does something unexpected. Instead of buying a fridge, she impulsively spends her savings on a portrait of herself. The painting leads Juliet out of suburbia and into the heady art scene of London, where she proves an astute spotter of talent. Yet she remains an outsider in both her worlds: a mother of two, drawn to a reclusive...
This volume includes a collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s early work, including 27 short stories, 7 sketches of early fiction, and a range of critical essays, childhood memoirs, and interviews. Singer’s early literary career in Warsaw (1925-1935) was crucially important in laying the building blocks for his great achievements in Jewish and world literature as a storyteller of Polish Jewry. During this period, Singer worked as a journalist, writer and translator in the main Yiddish center i...
