"A Jewish girl decides that she wants to celebrate Christmas, so she writes a letter to Santa"--

Witty, “utterly compelling” short stories about Jewish men of a certain age, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Snobbery (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review).
Set in Chicago and populated by characters ranging from lawyers and professors to scrap metal dealers, this collection of insightful and entertaining short fiction examines the crossroads and turning points of life, and the challenge...

Rosie's grandmother wears her clothes inside out to remind herself to buy oil for making latkes at Hanukkah. Includes a recipe for potato latkes.

Maurice and Norman Messer, father-and-son business partners, know a good product when they see it. That product is the Holocaust, and Maurice, a Holocaust survivor with an inflated personal history, and Norman, enjoying vicarious victimhood as a participant in the second-generation movement, proceed to market it enthusiastically. Not even the disappearance of Nechama, Norman's daughter and Maurice's granddaughter, into the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz,...

How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.


After that night, will Jacob ever speak for himself? The answer comes when his commanders send him on another mission—this time not to murder a spy but to marry one.


A...

When eleven-year-old Vanessa discovers an abandoned museum, she starts filling it with her own projects and art and memories, thinking maybe, if she can put them all together in just the right way, she can finally understand why she and her relationships are the way they are.

The first full-length novel from one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral, tells the story of a mid-century America and offers “further proof of Mr. Roth's astonishing talent…. Letting Go seethes with life” (The New York Times).
Published when Roth was twenty-nine and set in Chicago, New York, and Iowa city, Letting...

Sick with influenza during the 1918 epidemic and separated from her two sisters, a young Jewish girl living in Boston relies on the help of an old German man, and her visions of angels, to get better and to reunite herself with her family.

"After a black hole consumes the State of Israel, similar strange events occur in major cities around the world, ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles. It is not long before conspiracy theories take hold in various pockets of the globe: Are the Jews the victims, or are they the culprits?"--

A young boy learns about the meaning of Sukkot while overcoming his fear of the dark. Includes information on the history and customs of Sukkot.