By Scott Lasser | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Divorced and bereft over the death of his young son, lawyer David Halpert pilgrimages to his Detroit suburb to care for his ailing parents. Then he sees it splashed across...
By Joel Dovev | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | We all know the feeling: making a homecoming visit only to wander through the rooms of your childhood home and wonder, what is that? Based on his popular Crap at My...
By Adam Levin | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | This collection of ten short stories may be unlike any other. Author Adam Levin has a gift for the grotesque, the vile, and the absurd, packaged as our darkest but truest...
By Wayne Hoffman | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Benji Steiner straddles the middle – neither observant nor secular, neither independent nor reliant upon his parents, neither closeted nor in a relationship with...
By Alice Hoffman | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | It’s not easy to make characters living in 70 C.E., fighting the Romans on Masada, breathe on the page, but Alice Hoffman’s masterpiece succeeds. Two women...
By Wayne Hoffman, ed. | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | This latest addition to the growing genre of Birthright literature is pure fun. Billed as “liner notes for the latest album of Jewish life in America,”...
Haley Tanner’s debut novel, Vaclav & Lena, is as cute as it is profound, the coming-of-age story of two Russian immigrant children separated by evil but reunited by love. Your ear is so attuned to Russian...
Each of these fearless, brutally honest memoirs by Jewish humorists delivers moments where you will find yourself having to put the book down and let yourself laugh | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Mr. Funny Pants By...
By Gail Levin | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop |  In the annals of art history, Lee Krasner will forever be overshadowed by her husband, painter Jackson Pollock. But Krasner was a significant painter in her own right,...
By Zeruya Shalev | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Meet Ella Miller, a 36-year-old archaeologist with a six-year-old son and a husband she believes is tyrannical and no longer loves. Deciding to leave him is easy;...
The Oracle of Stamboul by first-time novelist Michael David Lukas is the eloquent tale of Eleonora Cohen, a precocious eight-year-old orphan growing up in the Ottoman Empire who cracks spy codes and advises the Sultan...
By Michael Wex | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | This rollicking family history features the screwball progeny of Elyokim Faktor, Polish refugee and textile heir turned mostlybeloved Canadian children’s television...
By David Albahari |  Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop |  One slap is all it takes for a Serbian newspaper columnist prone to the cerebral to descend into madness. The novel’s unnamed narrator stumbles...
By Joan Leegant | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | The lives of three New Yorkers looking for personal meaning in Israel collide tragically in short story writer Joan Leegant’s debut novel, a quick and gripping read....
By Shaul Kelner | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Sometimes a trip is just a trip. But to Shaul Kelner, a professor at Vanderbilt University, tourism is serious stuff, cajoling travelers into heightened states of awareness...
By Adam Langer | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | This is the sort of book that you will have to read twice. A slow to start narrative that evolves into a nail-biting caper, The Thieves of Manhattan is tongue-in-cheek...
By Elie Wiesel | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Elie Wiesel, known for his books rooted in the Holocaust, has produced a story probing the post-war generations’ ties to this dark period. Enter Yedidyah Wasserman,...
Show your enthusiasm for the real Jeff and Susie's soul-baring memoirs on living the comedic life | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World By Jeff Garlin One of HBO’s most...
By Adam Schell | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | The tomato stars in this Shakespearean-esque 16th century Italian countryside drama, a highbrow portrait of human nature driven by lowbrow sensibilities. Crass humor,...
By Robin Gerber | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Barbie, that tall blonde turning 50 this year, still has wide eyes and an inviting smile, but the story behind the silken doll is anything but saccharine. According to this...
By Esther David | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | A bird’s eye view of the fictional Shalom India Housing complex ultimately reveals the fabric of its tenants’ hearts and lives in this anthology of short stories...
By David Plotz | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | What can a year spent slugging through thirty nine books, 929 chapters and more than 600,000 words bag you? If you’re David Plotz and the tome happens to be the Bible,...
By Rebecca Heyl | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | The faces are what draw you to Rebecca Heyl’s Windows in the Wall. They are remarkable in their ordinariness, matter-of-factly going about their lives, whether bent...
Imagine sitting face-to-face with a potential reader, explaining why he or she should pick up your book. Add music, colors, animation, and a flash of plot to support your argument. Can you make the sale? You have three...
By Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan | Reviewed by Jaclyn Trop | Why would a Jewish young adult choose ten days in Israel over a vacation in Cancun? That’s the question professors Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan set...