Washoe County Library System

"In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country. Four days after his nineteenth birthday, Jonathan is sitting in a military jail in Israel. Languishing in the dark cell, he recalls the series of events that...

"In the vein of such classic family sagas as Fall on Your Knees, A Reunion of Ghosts is the confessional of three sisters who have decided to kill themselves on the very last day of the 20th century; in it they tell the story of a family haunted by suicide ever since the sisters' great-grandfather, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, developed the first poison gas used in warfare and also the lethal agent used in the Third Reich's gas chambers--inspired...

Before she goes to America, the Polish Jew Anya who has escaped several times during World War II, always searches for her little girl, given to Gentiles at the start of the war.

"Adam Stein, a former circus clown who was spared the gas chamber so that he might entertain thousands of other Jews as they marched to their deaths, is now the ringleader at an asylum in the Negev desert populated solely by Holocaust survivors. Alternately more brilliant than the doctors and more insane than any of the patients, Adam struggles wildly to make sense of a world in which the line has been irreversibly blurred between sanity and madness."--BOOK...

The youngest, least-favored member of an Eastern European Jewish family, Tzili is considered an embarrassment by her parents and older siblings. Her schooling has been a failure, she is simple and meek, and she seems more at home with the animals in the field than with people. And so when her panic-stricken family flees the encroaching Nazi armies, Tzili is left behind to fend for herself. At first seeking refuge with the local peasants, she is eventually...

"The gripping tale about two boys, once as close as brothers, who find themselves on opposite sides of the Holocaust. Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and wealthy philanthropist, is attending a fund-raiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, "the butcher of Zamosc." Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser, Ben Solomon, is convinced he is right. Solomon persuades...

A powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. Yaakov is a man of God, a father, a Talmud scholar, and a widower. After failing to save his wife's life, he is struggling both financially and spiritually. Lola is a woman from the secular world who has suffered terrible tragedy and hardship in her life. To find her place she has turned to God and the Orthodox community...

"Medallions is a collection of eight documentary stories originally published in Poland in 1946 that recount Nazi war crimes under the German occupation of the country. The author, Zofia Nalkowska, was a member of a special committee for the investigation of Nazi crimes in Poland, and the stories reflect facts she learned from victims and witnesses to atrocities inflicted on Polish civilians. Considered a masterpiece of antifascist world literature,...

"A dazzling debut novel set in New York City's Jewish immigrant community in 1935... How was it that out of all the girls in the office, I was the one to find myself in this situation? This didn't happen to nice Jewish girls. In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is...