While the feisty Esther Kaminsky understands her obligations, her artistic talent inspires her to secretly explore worlds outside her religion, to dream of studying in Paris and to believe that God has a special destiny for her. When tragedy strikes her family, Esther views it as a warning from an angry God and suppresses her desires in order to become an obedient "Jerusalem maiden." But when a surprising opportunity forces itself on to her preordained path, Esther finds her beliefs clashing dangerously with the passions she has staved off her entire life forcing her to confront the most difficult and damning question of all. To whom must she be true, God or herself?

    Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have struggled to connect. But when tragedy strikes, Gabriela senses there's more to her mother than painted nails and lips.Desperate to understand their relationship, Gabriela pieces together the stories of her family's previous generations—from Great-Grandmother Mercada the renowned healer, to Grandma Rosa who cleaned houses for the English, to Luna who had the nicest legs in Jerusalem. But as she uncovers shocking secrets, forbidden romances, and the family curse that links the women together, Gabriela must face a past and present far more complex than she ever imagined.Set against the Golden Age of Hollywood, the dark days of World War II, and the swingin' '70s, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows generations of unforgettable women as they forge their own paths through times of dramatic change. With great humor and heart, Sarit Yishai-Levi has given us a powerful story of love and forgiveness—and the unexpected and enchanting places we find each.

    Arie survived the Holocaust in Europe. Peter, one year older, was sent to America before the war began.They find each other again in Israel, learning everyone else in their family has been murdered. Peter becomes a top Mossad agent, deeply involved in many of the key spy adventures of the era. Arie becomes a scheming businessman, among the richest men in Israel: one brother is building the state, the other protecting it. But they have fallen in love with the same woman, a Jewish refugee from Egypt. The brothers jealousies and intrigues are mirrored by the young nation's very own struggles to survive.Praise for Promised Land: "Promised Land is a great sweeping epic...a moving story of triumph and tragedy, new love and historic hate, expertly told by a cast of unforgettable characters. Fletcher's writing is superb and rises to the level of importance that this story demands and deserves." Nelson DeMille, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cuban Affair"What a story [Fletcher] has chosen to tell, the coming into being of Israel, set against a family saga in the style of the great European novels. Promised Land is a novel that has much to teach your head and even more, your heart." Joseph Telushkin, New York Times bestselling author of Rebbe, Jewish Literacy, and Words that Hurt, Words that Heal[An] epic family saga, set against the rich tapestry of the creation of the State of Israel. Masterful in scope, yet intimate in lens, Promised Land is a rich tribute to the human spirit and a triumphant chronicle of one of the important events in modern history. Pam Jenoff, New York Times Bestselling Auth

    Surviving a sweatshop in lower Manhattan, a chance job with a Long Island elitefamily opens up her world. Invited in, up to a point, she unwittingly, albeit precariously, crossesthe social divide with her now open heart which puts all she worked for in jeopardy.What a truly wonderful story! I’ve read it three times, and with eachreading I find myself caring about the fabulous characters and theirlives even more.”— P. J. Alderman, New York Times Bestselling Author“From the riveting opening . . . until its gripping conclusion, this enthrallingnovel vividly portrays the desperate times of German immigrantslanding at Ellis Island in 1905. A timely read . . . it illuminates the issuesthat we are experiencing a century later. . .Phillips reminds us that love,light, and perseverance can help us find a way to overcome almost anyobstacle.”  — Chanticleer Reviews"A Beguiling Novel... Readers will be satisfied by this novel's fast-paced plotting and its memorable characters."    — Publishers WeeklyAUTHOR: GREGORY ERICH PHILLIPSISBN: ISBN 13 978-1-64058-011-4FORMAT: 5.5 X 8.5 PAPERBACKPAGES: 309PRICE: $18.95AVAILABLE: INGRAM BOOKSPUBLISHER: LIMA CONCORDIA contact: www.gregoryerichphillips.com

    At the behest of his agent, renowned author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to meet with his Dutch publisher, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city. While touring the Jewish Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon a looping reel of photos offering a glimpse of pre-war Dutch Jewish life, and is astonished to see the youthful face of his beloved mother staring back at him, posing with her husband, Yoel’s older sister, Nettie…and an infant he doesn’t recognize.This unsettling discovery launches him into a fervent search for the truth, revealing Amsterdam’s dark wartime history and the underground networks which hid Jewish children away from danger—but at a cost. The deeper into the past Yoel digs, the better he understands his mother’s silence, and the more urgent the question that has unconsciously haunted him for a lifetime—Who am I?—becomes. Evocative, insightful, and deeply resonant, House on Endless Waters beautifully illustrates the complex nature of identity and belonging, and the inextricability of past and present.

    Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila’s faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of communism in central Europe, the family moves to Paris, to the Marais, where Zalman tries to raise his children apart from the city in which they live.      When the two  girls come of age, Mila marries within the faith, while Atara continues to question fundamentalist doctrine. The different choices the two sisters makes force them apart until a dangerous secret threatens to banish them from the only community they’ve ever known.      A beautifully crafted, emotionally gripping story of what happens when unwavering love, unyielding law, and centuries of tradition collide, I Am Forbidden announces the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new voice and opens a startling window on a world long closed to most of us, until now.

    But in the aftermath, Avi is forced to flee to America. His darling wife Sara and the rest of his family soon follow – all except his brother Lieb, who stubbornly refuses to abandon his home. In ensuing years, while Avi lives the American immigrant’s dream, Lieb lives Russia’s nightmare: World War I, the Communist revolution, civil war, typhus, and famine. Still Lieb rejects Avi’s pleas to leave Russia. Then on the eve of World War II, Stalin’s pathological purges finally ensnare Lieb’s family. At last he realizes he must escape the Communist nightmare, but now all avenues are blocked, and Hitler’s armies are gathering. He turns to Avi, his brother in America, who frantically tries to rescue Lieb and his family with little more to work with than his own wit. Stretching from pre-Revolution Russia to post-Holocaust America, A Fine September Morning blends historical facts and fictional characters into a compelling epic family saga.

    Thomas Heiselberg has built a career in Berlin as a market researcher for an American advertising company.In Leningrad, twenty-two-year-old Sasha Weissberg has grown up eavesdropping on the intellectual conversations in her parents' literary salon.They each have grand plans for their lives. Neither of them thinks about politics too much, but after catastrophe strikes they will have no choice.Thomas puts his research skills to work elaborating Nazi propaganda. Sasha persuades herself that working as a literary editor of confessions for Stalin's secret police is the only way to save her family.When destiny brings them together, they will have to face the consequences of the decisions they have made.

    They are Abe and Pearl Jesler, older, childless, and an integral part of the thriving Jewish community that has been in Georgia since the founding of the colony. There, Yitzhak discovers a fractured world, where Reform and Conservative Jews live separate lives--distinctions, to him, that are meaningless given what he has been through. He further complicates things when, much to the Jeslers' dismay, he falls in love with Eva, a young widow within the Reform community. When a woman from Yitzhak's past suddenly appears--one who is even more shattered than he is--Yitzhak must choose between a dark and tortured familiarity and the promise of a bright new life.      Set amid the backdrop of America's postwar south, Among the Living grapples with questions of identity and belonging, and steps beyond the Jewish experience as it situates Yitzhak's story during the last gasp of the Jim Crow era. Yitzhak begins to find echoes of his own experience in the lives of the black family who work for the Jeslers--an affinity he does not share with the Jeslers themselves. This realization both surprises and convinces Yitzhak that his choices are not as clear-cut as he might have thought.

    She has never had physical contact with a man, but is bound to marry a stranger. The rabbi's wife teaches her what it means to be a Jewish wife, but Rivka has her own questions to answer. Soon buried secrets, fear and sexual desire bubble to the surface in a story of liberation and choice; not to mention what happens on the wedding night.

    But this is no ordinary holiday. The family has gathered to memorialize Leo, the youngest of the four siblings, an intrepid journalist and adventurer who was killed on that day in 2004, while on assignment in Iraq. The parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief. Their forty-year marriage is falling apart. Clarissa, the eldest sibling and a former cello prodigy, has settled into an ambivalent domesticity and is struggling at age thirty-nine to become pregnant. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer and the family contrarian, is angry at everyone. And Noelle, whose teenage years were shadowed by promiscuity and school expulsions, has moved to Jerusalem and become a born-again Orthodox Jew. The last person to see Leo alive, Noelle has flown back for the memorial with her husband and four children, but she feels entirely out of place. And Thisbe? - Leo's widow and mother of their three-year-old son - has come from California bearing her own secret. Set against the backdrop of Independence Day and the Iraq War, The World Without You is a novel about sibling rivalries and marital feuds, about volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, about the true meaning of family.

    Then, a chance meeting with a young French immigrant turns Rose's world upside down, its once bearable strictures suddenly tightening like a noose around her neck. In rebellion, she begins to live a secret life – a life that shocks her parents when it is discovered. With nowhere else to turn, and an overwhelming desire to be reconciled with those she loves, Rose tries to bow to her parents' demands that she agree to an arranged marriage. But pushed to the edge, she commits an act so unforgivable, it will exile her forever from her innocent young sister, her family, and all she has ever known.Forty years later, pious Pearl's sheltered young daughter Rivka suddenly discovers the ugly truth about her Aunt Rose, the outcast, who has moved on to become a renowned photographer. Inspired, but naïve and reckless, Rivka sets off on a dangerous adventure that will stir up the ghosts of the past, and alter the future in unimaginable ways for all involved.Powerful, page-turning and deeply moving, Naomi Ragen's The Sisters Weiss is an unforgettable examination of loyalty and betrayal; the differences that can tear a family apart and the invisible bonds that tie them together.

    After passage of the Orphan’s Decree, any unbetrothed Jewish child left orphaned will be instantly adopted by the local Muslim community. With her parents’ health failing, and no spousal prospects in sight, Adela’s situation looks dire until her uncle arrives from a faraway city, bringing with him a cousin and aunt who introduce Adela to the powerful rituals of henna tattooing. Suddenly, Adela’s eyes are opened to the world, and she begins to understand what it means to love another and one’s heritage. She is imperiled, however, when her parents die and a prolonged drought threatens their long-established way of life. She and her extended family flee to the city of Aden where Adela encounters old loves, discovers her true calling, and is ultimately betrayed by the people and customs she once held dear.Henna House is an intimate family portrait and a panorama of history. From the traditions of the Yemenite Jews, to the far-ranging devastation of the Holocaust, to the birth of the State of Israel, Eve offers an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a textured chronicle of a fascinating period in the twentieth century.Henna House is a rich, spirited, and sensuous tale of love, loss, betrayal, forgiveness, and the dyes that adorn the skin and pierce the heart.

    . . until now.What if there was a town that history missed?For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, and electricity, and the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, the whole town comes crashing into the twenty-first century.Pesha Lindauer, who has just suffered an ugly, acrimonious divorce, suddenly disappears. A day later, her husband goes after her, setting off a panic among the town elders. They send a woefully unprepared outcast named Yankel Lewinkopf out into the wider world to alert the Polish authorities. Venturing beyond the remote safety of Kreskol, Yankel is confronted by the beauty and the ravages of the modern-day outside world – and his reception is met with a confusing mix of disbelief, condescension, and unexpected kindness. When the truth eventually surfaces, his story and the existence of Kreskol make headlines nationwide. Returning Yankel to Kreskol, the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of its disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of Pesha and her former husband? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together . . .  or risk their village disappearing for good.

     1943. Tasa Rosinski and five relatives, all Jewish, escape their rural village in eastern Poland avoiding certain death and find refuge in a bunker beneath a barn built by their longtime employee. A decade earlier, ten-year-old Tasa dreams of someday playing her violin like Paganini. To continue her schooling, she leaves her family for a nearby town, joining older cousin Danik at a private Catholic academy where her musical talent flourishes despite escalating political tension. But when the war breaks out and the eastern swath of Poland falls under Soviet control, Tasa's relatives become Communist targets, her new tender relationship is imperiled, and the family's secure world unravels. From a peaceful village in eastern Poland to a partitioned post-war Vienna, from a promising childhood to a year living underground, Tasa's Song celebrates the enduring power of the human spirit."