Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age argues that late nineteenth-century US fiction grapples with and helps to conceptualize the disagreeable feelings that are both a threat to citizens' agency and an inescapable part of the emotional life of democracy--then as now. In detailing the corruption and venality for which the period remains known, authors including Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Adams, and Helen Hunt Jackson evoked the depressing ineff...

Twenty-two-year-old graduate student Joe Charnoff is desperate to share his life with the right girl, but can't even get himself a date. Sharon Gilboa is so tired of watching her best friend Joe constantly fail that it's spoiling her attempts at meeting her match. When one day Joe's boss hands him the phone number that holds the answer to his search, he soon finds everything he's been looking for-but will he have to betray Sharon to get it? Is she ready to do whatever it takes for Joe's ha...

For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving...

A Jewish girl finds refuge with a village outcast during WWII in this "elegantly crafted, beautifully written novel about love, survival and hope" (William Ryan).In a small Eastern European village, fifteen-year-old Yael is on the run from Nazi invaders. The so-called village idiot, Aleksei is a solitary mute who does not want for company. But as the brutal winter advances, he reluctantly takes Yael in. As she begins to win his trust, a delicate relationship develo...

Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist AwardWinner of the American Library Association's Sophie Brody MedalFinalist for the National Jewish Book AwardA singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: Forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York.Yevgeny Gelman...

A bomb plot draws Rabbi Small into international intrigue while he's vacationing in the Holy Land in this New York Times –bestselling novel.Edgar Award–Winning AuthorDavid Small has spent six years as the rabbi of Barnard's Crossing, Massachusetts, and every year his job has been in crisis. In desperate need of time away, he embarks on a three-month trip to Israel. He expects a relaxing, soul-nour...

Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When he goes onstage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pret...

Winner of the 2011 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime NovelIn Middle East lore the Debba is a mythical Arab hyena that can turn into a man who lures Jewish children away from their families to teach them the language of the beasts. To the Arabs he is a heroic national symbol; to the Jews he is a terrorist. To David Starkman, “The Debba” is a controversial play, written by his father the war hero, and performed only once, in Haifa in 1946, causing a massive rio...

DON'T EVER GET OLD was one of mystery-publishing's biggest critical successes last year, earning starred reviews from every major trade publication, garnering nominations for the Edgar, Thriller, and Anthony awards, and winning the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. The producer of four Harry Potter films and the Sherlock Holmes sequel, Lionel Wigram, is set to produce the film version.In Daniel Friedman's new novel, set in Memphis, Tennessee, and four months after the events of D...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Cain Mutiny delivers an "enormously entertaining" portrait of "a Bronx Tom Sawyer" ( San Francisco Chronicle).City Boy is Herman Wouk's sharp and moving novel of boyhood. A hilarious and often touching tale of an urban kid's adventures and misadventures on the street, in school, in the countryside, always in pursuit of Lucille, a heartless redhead personifying all the girls who torment and fascinate...

From Elie Wiesel, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of our fiercest moral voices, a provocative and deeply thoughtful new novel about a life shaped by the worst horrors of the twentieth century and one man’s attempt to reclaim happiness.Doriel, a European expatriate living in New York, suffers from a profound sense of desperation and loss. His mother, a member of the Resistance, survived World War II only to die in an accident, together with his father, soon after. Dorie...

A small-town Rabbi's quiet life is turned upside down when his only daughter drops a bombshellThe only long-term occupants of Lud, New Jersey, reside in its cemeteries,a fact that suits Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn just fine. Never particularly passionate about his religious calling, Rabbi Goldkorn spends his days officiating funerals and burying the dead in the local cemetery. His life is simple by design—until one day his daughter's scandalous rebellion threatens to send...