#hardcover #ya #youngadultfiction #jewish #diverse #teenage #realisticfiction

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Oregon

HARPER’S DAD IS getting a divorce from her beloved stepmother, Jane. Even worse, Harper has lost her stepsister, Tess; the divorce divides them. Harper decides to escape by joining a volunteer program to build a house for a family in Tennessee who lost their home in a tornado. Not that she knows a thing about construction.

Soon she’s living in a funky motel and working long days in blazing heat with a group of kids from all over the country. At the site, she works alongside Teddy, the son of the family for whom they are building the house. Their partnership turns into a summer romance, complete with power tools. Learning to trust and love Teddy isn’t easy for Harper, but it’s the first step toward finding her way back home.


From the Hardcover edition.

How to Build a House

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Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Animated Menorah

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Daniel Silva

Gabriel Allon #17 — Sticker residue on front cover.

New Jersey

A Novel

“One of fiction’s greatest spies,” (Kirkus), Gabriel Allon returns for his seventeenth adventure in the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva. The Black Widow, the last book in the series, was a prescient and timely thriller — called “a sobering, insightful, and multifaceted look at the overwhelming complexities of the seemingly interminable war in the Middle East” (Booklist, starred review). It drew rave reviews from critics and readers. It also introduced a compelling new female spy, destined to make a return in the series. Fans and new readers alike will be drawn in once again by this masterful storyteller at the height of his writerly powers — “Silva is a true genius with his portrait of the Israeli assassin-art restorer facing new, real world complexities” (Politico).

House of Spies

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A Novel 

The acclaimed National Book Award finalist--"one of the United States' finest writers," according to Joshua Ferris, "full of wit, humanity, and fearless curiosity"--now gives us a novel that will join the short list of classics about children caught up in the Holocaust.

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar and unhappy young boy whose family is driven by the German onslaught from the Polish countryside into Warsaw and slowly battered by deprivation, disease, and persecution. He and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives by scuttling around the ghetto to smuggle and trade contraband through the quarantine walls in hopes of keeping their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police, not to mention the Gestapo.

When his family is finally stripped away from him, Aron is rescued by Janusz Korczak, a doctor renowned throughout prewar Europe as an advocate of children's rights who, once the Nazis swept in, was put in charge of the Warsaw orphanage. Treblinka awaits them all, but does Aron manage to escape--as his mentor suspected he could--to spread word about the atrocities? 
Jim Shepard has masterfully made this child's-eye view of the darkest history mesmerizing, sometimes comic despite all odds, truly heartbreaking, and even inspiring. Anyone who hears Aron's voice will remember it forever.

The Book of Aron

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Mary Doria Russell

Missouri

Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of "The Sparrow" and "Children of God." High school & older.

A Thread of Grace

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Lara Vapnyar

1st Edition/1st Printing/Dust Jacket. Ex-library copy with typical stamps and interior marks. Binding severely cracked in front (pictured)

Stories 

Reflecting the perspective of a recent immigrant to the United States, a collection of short fiction explores the lives of Russians in Moscow and Russians in Brooklyn.

There Are Jews in My House

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Jill Dubois

Mair Rosh

Revised/2nd Edition, Library Binding. Ex-library copy with torn out front page and other typical internal markings/stamps.

Explores the geography, history, government, economy, people, and culture of Israel.

Israel (Cultures of the World)

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Abby Levine

Former library copy with expected stickers and markings. 

Max and his family prepare to celebrate Passover. In cumulative verse, Max and his sister Ruth shop for matzah in the Passover aisle of the grocery store. The family gathers for the traditional Seder that celebrates this holiday of freedom.

This Is the Matzah

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Francesca Segal

New York

"It is impossible to resist this novel's wit, grace, and charm." --Lauren Groff, author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia

A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment; a triumphant and beautifully executed recasting of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community--a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam's role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.

But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel's younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he'd care to admit. Ellie--beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent--offers a liberation that he hadn't known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?


The Innocents

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Pearl Abraham

Minnesota

The author of "The Romance Reader" creates a stunning portrait of the disintegration of a marriage and the cultural clash between Hasidic and secular American values.

Giving up America

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Dani Shapiro

A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

"The ... author of Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets--a real-time exploration of the ... discovery she made last year about her father, and her struggle to piece together the hidden the story of her own life"--

Inheritance

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Carmit Delman

Ex-library copy with typical internal stamps/markings; what's more, binding in front is *damaged/torn* 

Growing up Between Cultures - A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Girl

"From the outside, no matter what the gradations of my mixed heritage, the shadow of Indian brown in my skin caused others to automatically perceive me as Hindu or Muslim. . . . Still, I trekked through life with the spirit of a Jew, fleshed out by the unique challenges and wonders of a combined brown and white tradition." In the politics of skin color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her uncommon heritage. "Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman's memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and textures intertwine, Carmit's unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel--and the knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts--and the inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes, Jewish, Indian, and American. Carmit Delman's journey throughreligious traditions, family tensions, and social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with grace and an acute sense of depth. "Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously unseen world.

Burnt Bread and Chutney

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Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

The crime was called in by Rina Lazarus, and Decker is relieved to discover that she is a calm and intelligent witness. She is also the only one in the sheltered community willing to speak of this unspeakable violation. As Rina tries to steer Decker through the maze of religious laws, the two grow closer. But before they get to the bottom of this horrendous crime, revelations come to light that are so shocking, they threaten to come between the hard-nosed cop and the deeply religious woman with whom he has become irrevocably linked.

New, unread paperback, listed as in like new condition due to sticker residue on the front cover, and a little wear in the center of the front cover as shown in the last picture. ￼

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

The Ritual Bath 

Karl Konig

Karl König: My Task is an inspiring introduction to König's remarkable life and work. This book combines König's autobiographical fragment and an essay by Peter Selg with two selected reminiscences written by König's colleagues Anke Weihs and Hans-Heinrich Engel.

Born in 1902 into a Jewish family, Karl König grew up in Vienna in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied medicine and during this time came across the work of Rudolf Steiner. Soon after graduating he worked with Ita Wegman in Switzerland, where he also met his wife, Tilla.

He was a pioneer in the early days of Pilgramshain, a home for children with special needs in Silesia, Germany. However, in 1936 under political pressure he left Germany for Austria. Here he had a large medical practice as well as being the focus of a group of young people interested in Steiner's work.

Following the annexation of Austria by the Nazis, König and many of the young people around him came to Britain as refugees. The ideal of working together as a community was put into practice with the founding of Camphill in 1939. König was the driving force behind the expansion of the Camphill movement across the British Isles, into Europe, South Africa and North America. He died in 1966

New unread book. Does have inscription on the first page.

Autobiography and Biographies

This is the story of a remarkable life, told in K nig's own words. Born in 1902, Karl K nig grew up in Vienna. He studied medicine, and during that time encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner. Soon after graduating, K nig worked with Ita Wegman in Switzerland, where he met his wife Tilla. In Germany, Karl K nig founded Pilgrimshain, a home for children with special needs. However, following the annexation of Austria by the Nazis, he and many young people around him moved to Great Britain as refugees. In 1939, the ideal of working together as a community was put into practice with the founding of Camphill. K nig became the driving force that led to the expansion of the Camphill movement throughout the British Isles, into Europe, South Africa, and North America. He died in 1966.

Karl König: My Task

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Nevada

This small, chunky volume presents the witty, wonderful, deadpan and droll insight of Jewish culture and humor.


With chapters on wisdom, mitzvahs, dybbuks, proverbs, jokes, curses, conventions, mores (ethics), love amd marriage, men and women, children and family--this captivating collection provides reflections gleaned from a wealth of ancient, traditional and modern sources. The range of wise observations on the ways of the world, snappy one-liners, stories and expressions captures the spirit of the Jews throughout the centuries. Illustrated with sixty watercolor paintings, The Big Little Book of Jewish Wit & Wisdom will delight and engage even the toughest Jewish mother.

Some examples include:

When we hear a baby laugh, it is the loveliest thing that can happen to us. -- Sigmund Freud

A child's wisdom is also wisdom. -- Yiddish proverb

May you lose all your teeth but one, and may that one have a cavity. -- Anonymous (Yiddish curse)

Big Little Book of Jewish Wit and Wisdom

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Pennsylvania

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

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The Musings of a Jewish Boy Riding his Motorcycle through the Christian World

It was a motorcycle trip along back roads down south that led to two journeys: one on paved roads and the other in the author's mind. Both trips are filled with love, fear, insight, and laughter. C'mon take the ride

From Cross to Cross

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Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

A moving account of a mother and daughter who visit Germany to face the Holocaust tragedy that has caused their family decades of intergenerational trauma, from the author of Brothers, Sisters, Strangers

Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award
 
In 1938, when Edith Westerfeld was twelve, her parents sent her from Germany to America to escape the Nazis. Edith survived, but most of her family perished in the death camps. Unable to cope with the loss of her family and homeland, Edith closed the door on her past, refusing to discuss even the smallest details.
 
Fifty-four years later, when the void of her childhood was consuming both her and her family, she returned to Stockstadt with her grown daughter Fern. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. Together, they found a town that had dramatically changed on the surface, but which hid guilty secrets and lived in enduring denial.
 
On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and--more importantly--with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them. Motherland is a story of learning to face the past, of remembering and honoring while looking forward and letting go. It is an account of the Holocaust's lingering grip on its witnesses; it is also a loving story of mothers and daughters, roots, understanding, and, ultimately, healing.

Motherland

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Home to Stay

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Yael Mermelstein

Amateur inventor Izzy creates a machine that miraculously cleans the entire house of hametz just in time for Passover. Includes author's note about Passover and hametz.

Izzy the Whiz and Passover Mcclean

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Jan Eliasberg

For readers of The Nightingale and The Alice Network, a thrilling historical debut about a female scientist working to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II, and a young military investigator determined to uncover her secret past. In 1945, Hannah Weiss, a Jewish-Austrian scientist, is removed from her laboratory at the Los Alamos National Lab and taken to Leavenworth Prison for interrogation. Major Jack Delaney, a rising star in the shadowy world of military intelligence, is convinced that someone in the United States has been sharing information with the Nazi party. The captivating, raven-haired, female scientist in New Mexico is his primary suspect. Across the globe, researches are racing to perfect the atomic bomb--a weapon powerful enough to stop WWII, and, perhaps, all future wars. But for Hannah, who has been sending mysterious postcards to a contact still in Germany, the trouble is just beginning. As Jack questions Hannah about her involvement with the infamous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin ten years earlier, and her apparently friendly relationships with high-ranking members of the Nazi party, he slowly becomes seduced by her intelligence and quiet confidence. Is Hannah a Nazi spy, or is she protecting a far more personal and dark secret of her own? When Jack finally uncovers the truth about her life in Berlin before the war, Hannah must compromise her political allegiance, and choose between two lovers, and two versions of history. A vivid, page-turning, and inspiring re-imagination of the final months of World War II, and the brilliant researchers behind the first atomic bomb, Hannah's War is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman, and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.

Hannah's War

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Kentucky

A monumental new novel from the bestselling author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, “Abraham!” before ordering him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham responds, “Here I am.” Later, when Isaac calls out, “My father!” before asking him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, “Here I am.” How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others’? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in eleven years—a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy. Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home—and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear. Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers loved in his earlier work, Here I Am is Foer’s most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet. It not only confirms Foer’s stature as a dazzling literary talent but reveals a novelist who has fully come into his own as one of our most important writers.

Here I Am

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#paperback #holidays #jewish #judaism #jews #passover #hanukkah #yomkippur #messianic #shabbat

The Uninvited Guest and Other Jewish Holiday Tales 

#hardcover #jewish #american
Front page torn out. 

Louisiana

Being Female and Jewish in America

The founder of Ms. magazine reveals her stuggle to reconcile her feminisim with her Judaism.

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Dana Reinhardt