"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...

"Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front,...

"Adam, a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Will he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls? Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. One of the people he interviews is his flatmate Sala, who is stoic, determined, and funny--and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement,...

"An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors' land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government. "A brilliantly conceived family history, one that places questions of responsibility and atonement at the center of the conversation about America's political future."--the Whiting Foundation. Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious...

"A guide to contemporary Judaism by law professor and public intellectual Noah Feldman"-- What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship...

Ten-year-old Saralee Siegel accidentally creates a magical soup for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and must use her heightened sense of smell to save the town from a culinary disaster.

"In Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, a golem is a humanoid being created out of mud or clay and animated through secret prayers. Its sole purpose is to defend the Jewish people against the immediate threat of violence. It is always a rabbi who makes a golem, and always in a time of crisis. But Len Bronstein is no rabbi--he's a Brooklyn art teacher who steals a large quantity of clay from his school, gets extremely stoned, and manages to bring his creation...

"Dueling baker sisters Esther and Hester meet their new neighbor Sylvester, who gladly becomes their babka tester, determining which shvester's (sister's) babka is the best"--

It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolph (Rudi) Vrba has made up his mind. After barely surviving nearly two years in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, he knows he must escape. Even if death is more likely. Rudi has learned the terrible secret hidden behind the heavily guarded fences of concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe: the methodical mass killing of Jewish prisoners. As trains full of people arrive daily, Rudi knows that the...

Young Aaron grows up in Brooklyn, sharing a room with his zayde (grandfather) and his many books. Zayde grew up in the Old Country where everyone spoke Yiddish. Aaron wants to learn how to speak the language of the Old Country. But Zayde thinks that Aaron, and all the new generation of American Jews, should speak English and play baseball -- just like all Americans do. When Zayde becomes very old and can no longer see well enough to read his Yiddish...