The narrow street on which Harry Bernstein grew up was seemingly unremarkable; there was nothing to distinguish it from the hundreds of other such working class streets in the industrial north of England - save for an invisible wall down the middle, dividing Jews on one side, from Christians on the other. The geographical distance may have been a couple of yards, but socially, it was miles.'But there are few rules or unwritten laws that are not broken when circumstances demand, and...

“‘Harry, this is Leonard. I just wanted you to know I watched your film on me and it struck me I never thanked you enough at the time for the magnificent gift you gave with that film. Call me.’Then he left his personal number.” Harry Rasky, April 2000.No other book about Leonard Cohen gets so close to the man, his city, his poems and songs, his friends, his background, and the many original influences that forged this world-famous poet, songwriter and performer as the Song of Leonard Cohen...

In this first book-length study of Ayn Rand's anti-utopia Anthem, essays explore the historical, literary, and philosophical themes presiding in this novella written in opposition to the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union (and Nazi Germany). Written in 1937, published in 1938 in Britain, and subsequently in a revised form in the United States in 1946, Anthem investigates the importance of the ego and freedom, and the individual against the state. Editor Robert Mayhew has...

When life is at its best, the unimaginable can shatter everything you think you know...Abigail Samuels has no reason to feel anything but joy on the morning her life falls apart. The epitome of the successful Jewish American woman, she is married to a well-known and respected accountant and is in the middle of planning her daughter Kayla's wedding. Kayla, too, wakes up that morning with the world in the palm of her hand. Having lived the charmed life of a well-loved child from a ha...

Winner of a Jewish National Book Award for his previous book, Walking Israel, NBC Special Correspondent Martin Fletcher uses meticulous research and his own family’s history in this stunning novel.Dramatizing explosive events in London and Palestine in the years directly following World War II, The List follows the lives of Edith and Georg, Austrian refugees who are expecting their first baby in a world unfriendly to Jews. Anti-Semitism sweeps across the streets o...

Karen Abbott, the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and “pioneer of sizzle history” (USA Today), tells the spellbinding true story of four women who risked everything to become spies during the Civil War.Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies.Af...

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • “A powerfully imagined novel . . . [a] profoundly moving book that engages the heights and depths of human experience.”—Los Angeles TimesIt is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to find safety now that the Italians have broken from Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies....

On 21 July 1942 the Nazis invaded Poland. In the small town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug cellar. Living above and protecting them were the Becks.Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr Beck wa...

19 year-old Chani lives in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community of North West London. 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; not to mention what happens on the wedding night…

From the author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, the iconic, New York Times-bestselling debut novel that introduced an important Chinese-American voice with an inspiring story of an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures.When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Di...

In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure: as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor.Poitier credits his parents and his childhoo...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn estranged mother and daughter reunite to confront their family’s role in World War II in this harrowing, unforgettable novel about lost love and inherited shame.For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph...