For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control,...

"Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front,...

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, in Orthodox Jewish circles, that a single young man possessed of aptitude for Torah learning must be in want of a wife. Every family in town will have its eyes set on him, hoping to appropriate him for their daughters. To her great dismay, Mrs. Baila Sara Bennett of Flatbush hasn't been blessed with a single son -- only five lovely daughters. How will she and her husband, a struggling chinuch family, manage...

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. But Rachel's life is not her own. To save her father's business, she is married off to a widower with three children. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much...

"Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II--an experience Eva remembers well--and the search to reunite people...

"Benjy Romano, a scientist and a baal teshuvah living in Bnei Brak, makes an amazing scientific breakthrough one night...and immediately becomes a fugitive pursued by unidentified dangerous criminals. Bruno Gonzloff, Israeli organized crime boss, announces an exhibition of his private paintings, drawing his sworn enemy, Chief Superintendent Tani Ben-Shabbat, into the fray. Marwan Al-Bakri, an Arab from the city of Taibeh, embarks on a perilous project...

"Naftali: "Who am I - a Cherokee warrior, or a Jew?" Chanale: "Where are my brothers and sister? Why don't they come for me?" Berel: "Should I keep my promise and marry Toiby? How can she know what it means to be a good Jewish wife and mother?" Mina Rose: "I must leave my father's house, but I have nowhere else to go!" In the popular novel The Captives, readers met - and learned to love -- Toiby and Naftali, two Jews abducted as children and raised...

The Lion is a powerful novel by famed author Meir Uri Gottesman. In it, Yaakov, a young boy who lives with his grandfather, is woken up one night by the sounds of Zeideh...making strange animal noises. Unable to contain his curiosity, Yaakov asks Zeideh about it, never dreaming how deep his grandfather's answer will go, or where it will bring their family... The Lion is a story that spans thousands of years: from the days of Eliyahu Hanavi to modern-day...