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[Book Review] The Interpreter by AJ Sidransky
Posted on February 2, 2021 Leave a Comment
By AJ Sidransky American GI Kurt Berlin finds himself being recruited by the OSS to serve as a translator in war-torn Europe, during the interrogations of captured Nazis. Through his work, Berlin discovers the Nazi responsible for his own persecution before he fled Europe as a refugee. He finds himself facing a moral dilemma as […]
[Book Review] Forget Russia by L. Bordetsky-Williams
Posted on January 27, 2021 Leave a Comment
By L. Bordetsky-Williams Anna is a second generation Russian-American Jew and a senior at UConn when she gets an opportunity to study in Moscow, in 1980. She finds herself navigating a Cold War culture she doesn’t fully understand. But an encounter with a young man at a Rosh Hashanah service leads to uncovering a lost […]
[Book Review] Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Posted on January 27, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Fredrik Backman One doesn’t expect going to an open house to view an apartment is going to be a life-changing event. But, for six prospective home buyers, it became just that when a would-be bank robber takes them hostage. Add a mystery man in the bathroom, a real estate agent, and a father-son police […]
[Book Review] The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager
Posted on January 20, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager The Writer’s Library is a collection of interviews with noteworthy and influential writers. Spanning a wide range of backgrounds, each author was asked what book(s) inspired you to take up the pen and join the literary world? Because before a writer becomes an author, they’re first a reader. As […]
[Book Review] The Crate: A Story Of War, A Murder, And Justice by Deborah Vadas Levison
Posted on January 20, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Deborah Vadas Levison A grisly discovery under her family’s Toronto cottage suddenly brings back author, Deborah Vadas Levison’s parents’, long set-aside memories of the horrors of the Shoah. As renovations are being completed on her family’s idyllic get-away spot, a crate containing human remains is found under the cottage. Vadas Levison’s memoir explores trauma […]
[Book Review] Meditations with the Hebrew Letters: A Guide for the Modern Seeker by Gilla Nissan
Posted on January 19, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Gilla Nissan In her book, Meditation with the Hebrew Letters, author and scholar, Gilla Nissan, examines the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, not as a means of communication or the language of the Torah, but as the building blocks of life. The book explores the letters as a means of meditation, within the […]
[ARC Review] Forgiving Stephen Redmond by A.J. Sidransky
Posted on January 13, 2021 1 Comment
By A.J. Sidransky It’s a hot August day in New York when Detectives Tolya Kurchenko and Pete Gonzalvez are called to a Manhattan demolition site to investigate a strange discovery. Inside a wall on the third floor of a building, the construction crew has discovered a murder victim, fully dressed in a suit and hat. […]
[Book Review] Turning Homeward: Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild by Adrienne Ross Scanlan
Posted on January 13, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Adrienne Ross Scanlan Tikkum Olam is a Hebrew phrase translated to ‘repair of the world’. Adrienne Ross Scanlan embodies this Jewish call to action when she moved across the country and immerses herself in repairing spawning habitat for salmon. In Turning Homeward, Ross weaves memoir with a discussion of environmental issues and Jewish thought […]
[ARC Review] The Ferret by Tom Minder
Posted on January 6, 2021 Leave a Comment
By Tom Minder Louise Kimble is an elder in the LDS church and appointed foreman at a luxury estate development near Los Vegas. Kimble’s life is turned upside down when he uncovers a money-laundering scheme and he finds himself testifying against church leaders. For his protection, Kimble is relocated to southern New Jersey with a […]
[Book Review] The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross
Posted on December 23, 2020 Leave a Comment
By Max Gross Imagine, if you will, a village so remote that time has seemingly passed it by. In his book, The Lost Shtetl, Max Gross transports us to a village, home to an Orthodox Jewish community, in a remote part of Poland that has been untouched by history. That is until a young woman, […]
Heidi Slowinski 