Book picks similar to
The Lonely Tree by Yael Politis


historical-fiction
israel
coming-of-age
fiction

After the Rain


Rita Gerlach - 2015
    Barrie’s play 'What Every Woman Knows', premiered in Atlantic City and the first Model T rolled off the assembly line in Detroit. It is a year when the world faced one of its worst disasters in history, when the New Year would heal the wounds of loss.Louisa Borden lives a privileged life in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a new and thriving community on the outskirts of Washington, DC for the well-to-do. Against the wishes of her domineering grandmother, she retreats from the prospects of a loveless marriage and instead searches for what she hopes is her calling in life.When her horse is spooked along Rock Creek, she is thrown from the saddle—an embarrassing situation for any affluent young lady. Soaking wet, bruised and humiliated, she is carried up the muddy bank to safety by Jackson O’Neil, a stranger to the city, who changes the course of everything, including the lives of all those around her.

The Curse of Time


Andreea Pryde - 2019
    Do not shut your eyes to the gifts with which the Gods have endowed you."☆Greek mythology,☆Cursed artefacts☆A connection that shatters the time barrier.☆A sassy, talking kittenI never believed in paranormal. Curses, enchantments, lucky amulets, evil spirits, angels, demons, Heaven, and Hell - all this meant nothing more than fantasies found between the covers of a book.What changed my mind? A new job at a museum.Getting used to the new place was at very least awkward, but life went back to normal-more or less.Things become genuinely complicated with the discovery of a very unlikely connection — me, from the present, and a young woman from the 19th-century named Leah. Capable of taking over her body when Leah agrees, l get to discover hidden lies, mistakes, and foolish ambitions, which if left alone can destroy the future.But, how can I face this situation when my own heart is about to get stolen by the surprising charm of the past?Only Time can tell...

Catching the Current


Jenny Pattrick - 2005
    However Conrad - a talented and impetuous Faroeman - finds he cannot escape his past.In this companion novel to the bestselling Denniston novels, a free spirit is pitted against the forces of tradition. This is Conrad's story, and that of the unusual woman Anahuia. It is a tale of new lands and old songs, of seafaring and war and the search for love.

The Undesirables


Chad Thumann - 2016
    Throughout the city, people are dying of starvation and frostbite, and Karen knows that if she doesn’t escape immediately, she will share their fate. If she has any hope of leaving Russia and reuniting with her fiancé, Bobby, in New York, she must do the impossible: cross enemy lines and then stow away.On her harrowing journey, Karen encounters Petr, a young conscripted Russian soldier. She isn’t sure she can trust him—he is equally wary of her. But as the two join forces in order to stay alive, an unexpected romance takes root.Now, as Karen gets closer to the reality of escape, she has a choice to make: Will she return to a safe life in America with Bobby, or remain in war-torn Russia with Petr?

Raising Sparks


Ariel Kahn - 2018
    Meandering through the narrow streets she finds herself at the door of one of the city's most renowned and reclusive mystics and discovers her father's top rabbinical student, Russian immigrant Moshe studying forbidden Kabbalistic texts. She has a disturbing vision of a tree of prayers growing up inside the house, and the prayers all seem to be talking to her. The prayers become a giant bird, and chase her from the house. Malka has unwittingly uncovered a great mystical gift. Kabbalists believe that since the world was spoken into existence, if they can hear and understand that original Divine language, they can use it themselves, to shape and manipulate reality. Once in a millennia, a kabbalist is born with this ability. It turns out that Malka is one of them. After a disastrous first date with Moshe, Malka flees Jerusalem for Safed where she is drawn into a cult called Mystical Encounters, run by charismatic cult leader Avner Marcus. Avner is unsettled by Malka's authenticity, and she is not allowed to attend classes. Her only friends are former night club singer Shira, and traumatised ex-soldier Evven. Malka sets up her own mystical retreat in the woods, at an abandoned construction site. When she reveals this to Avner, he forces her to take him there and tries to rape her. Malka manages to evade him, and then burns down the cult after manipulating the Modern Hebrew word for Electricity, Chashmal Malka heads for Tel Avi, and sleeps rough on the beaches of the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa. Here she is discovered by legendary Arab chef Rukh Baraka, who is seeking to rekindle his career by training Arab and Israeli street children to create extraordinary food for his new restaurant, the Leviathan. Malka bonds with fellow runaway Mahmoud, who is escaping the wrath of his Imam father at his "deviant" sexuality. Mahmoud reveals the city behind the city, the hidden Palestinian history of which Malka has been ignorant. Moshe has been trying to find Malka and is forced to confront some of his own demons, including the disappearance of his younger sister when she was in his care. Moshe swears that he will not lose another girl he loves.

Safekeeping


Jessamyn Hope - 2015
    Full of romance, tragedy, betrayal, and the constant reminder that chaos is a driving force in everyone’s story, Safekeeping is a wise and memorable debut by a novelist of great talent and originality.” —The Boston GlobeIt’s 1994 and Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at a kibbutz in Israel with a medieval sapphire brooch. To make up for a past crime, he needs to get the priceless heirloom to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz fifty years earlier.There Adam joins other troubled people trying to turn their lives around: Ulya, the ambitious and beautiful Soviet émigré; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir, the Israeli teenager wounded in a bus bombing; and Ziva, the old Zionist Socialist firebrand who founded the kibbutz. By the end of that summer, through their charged relationships with one another, they each get their last chance at redemption.In the middle of this web glows the magnificent sapphire brooch with its perilous history spanning three continents and seven centuries. With insight and beauty, Safekeeping tackles that most human of questions: how can we expect to find meaning and happiness when we know that nothing lasts?

You Bring the Distant Near


Mitali Perkins - 2017
    Three generations. One great American love story. Ranee, worried that her children are losing their Indian culture; Sonia, wrapped up in a forbidden biracial love affair; Tara, seeking the limelight to hide her true self; Shanti, desperately trying to make peace in the family; Anna, fighting to preserve her Bengali identity.

June


Miranda Beverly-Whittemore - 2016
    Jude, Ohio, mourning the loss of the woman who raised her—her grandmother, June. But a knock on the door forces her out of isolation. Cassie has been named the sole heir to legendary matinee idol Jack Montgomery's vast fortune. How did Jack Montgomery know her name? Could he have crossed paths with her grandmother all those years ago? What other shocking secrets could June’s once-stately mansion hold?Soon Jack’s famous daughters come knocking, determined to wrestle Cassie away from the inheritance they feel is their due. Together, they all come to discover the true reasons for June’s silence about that long-ago summer, when Hollywood came to town, and June and Jack’s lives were forever altered by murder, blackmail, and betrayal. As this page-turner shifts deftly between the past and present, Cassie and her guests will be forced to reexamine their legacies, their definition of family, and what it truly means to love someone, steadfastly, across the ages.

The Plum Tree


Ellen Marie Wiseman - 2012
    “Bloom where you’re planted,” is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out. Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake.

Measure Twice


J.J. Hensley - 2014
    In his particular case, the drug of choice is religion. Now with his wife dead and city officials to blame, Mayton is out for revenge. In order to commit the atrocities necessary to spread his message of justice, he must change his ways and become the evil he has always abhorred.Pittsburgh Homicide Detective Jackson Channing is struggling to break free from his own addiction. His alcoholism may have already cost him his marriage and now threatens to sweep away his sanity. Ever since he and his partner were brutally tortured by a sadistic murderer, his life has spun out of control. Following a failed suicide attempt, Channing - a former distance runner - decides his life must have some meaning and the only way he can put the pieces back together is to break free of his addiction and commit acts of redemption.When the body of a city official is discovered in a public location, the entire city of Pittsburgh bears witness to a form of evil that is difficult to comprehend. Channing learns the killer is patient, methodical, and precise. In order to stop the killing, Channing will have to pull his life together and come to terms with a secret that is tearing him apart.With each chapter of this thriller representing one of the 12 steps of addiction recovery, Measure Twice is a story of personal struggle, revenge, and the search for redemption.Pay attention throughout this heart-pounding pursuit. The details are important because every cut is lethal.

A Bend in the Stars


Rachel Barenbaum - 2019
    Since their parents drowned fleeing to America, Miri and Vanya have been raised by their babushka, a famous matchmaker who has taught them to protect themselves at all costs: to fight, to kill if necessary, and always to have an escape plan. Can they bear to leave the homeland that has given them so much?Before they have time to make their choice, war is declared and Vanya goes missing, along with Miri's fiancé. Miri braves the firing squad to go looking for them both. As the eclipse that will change history darkens skies across Russia, not only the safety of Miri's own family but the future of science itself hangs in the balance.

The Town: The Lady Who Sinned


Greenwriter - 2016
    But something in her lies makes McKenzie Haverston desperate for the truth…When Belinda shows up in McKenzie’s home asking for protection in return for important information on a case he’s working on, he rejects her. But when he learns where she had been banished after her great scandal five years ago, he finds himself striking a deal with the woman—he protects her, she gives him answers. The question now is: how true is her tale?She was once considered the fairest of them all, but one scandal later, she has become the most reviled. And she is also being hunted. If Belinda wants to stay alive, she has to start trusting McKenzie Haverston, a task she finds to be surprisingly easy to do. However, as the truth of the past begins to resurface, and the secrets of her scandal is revealed, Belinda is confronted by her own demons, causing her to doubt her own reality.

A Hero's Homecoming


Carlene Havel - 2012
    His wife Rita has disappeared. His credit cards are invalid. A stranger is living in his house and he keeps running into people who are convinced he was killed in action months ago. Worst of all, his wealthy father has suffered a stroke.Psychologist Charlotte Phillips claims to be his comatose father’s legal guardian. Rich is determined to learn what has happened, gain control of his father’s money, and unmask Charlotte as the gold-digging schemer he’s certain she is. He is shocked to find his father’s crusty old attorney has been taken in by her along with everyone else.Can Rich straighten out the mess his life has become?

Flower Net


Lisa See - 1997
    ambassador's son is discovered entombed in a frozen lake in Beijing. Then the son of a powerful Chinese politician is found dead in the hold of a smuggler's freighter bound for California. The Chinese and American authorities suspect the deaths are linked and, in a rare move, join forces to solve the crime, and soon U.S. District Attorney David Stark is sent across the Pacific to team up with brilliant yet rebellious police detective Liu Hulan. Their investigation takes them into every corner of today's China -- from glitzy karaoke bars, where government leaders and mafia kingpins make their most unsavory deals, to Beijing's labyrinthine hutongs, where working-class Chinese have eked out their livings for centuries.Revealing a China that most Westerners have never seen -- a strange nation at once admirable and frightening -- Flower Net is an utterly original story and one of the most timely, thrilling, and thought-provoking reads from an astonishing new writer."Flower Net is a treat. In this, her debut mystery, Lisa See begins to do for contemporary Beijing what, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco". -- Washington Post

The Locket


Ruth Saberton - 2020
    Falling in love is little more than a dream and leaving her small Cornish village an impossibility. But as the storm clouds of war gather a chance encounter changes Emily’s future and steals her heart forever.Over a century later researching family history is a solace for Alison Foy while her beloved soldier son is away on active service. When she stumbles across a forgotten link between her great-grandparents and the famous war poet Kit Rivers, Alison discovers their past is woven through her present in a tapestry of loss, love and long kept secrets. One tug of the thread will be all it takes for a decades-old pattern to unravel…THE LOCKET, the new companion novel to Ruth Saberton’s bestselling THE LETTER, is an unforgettable tale of friendship, sacrifice and never-ending love.