Home­bound by Por­tia Elan

“Por­tia Elan’s Home­bound stretch­es across cen­turies, mov­ing from 1980s Cincin­nati to a flood-rav­aged world far in the future, pop­u­lat­ed by beings with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, scav­enger ships, and frag­ile forms of human con­nec­tion. Even in its spec­u­la­tive reach, it keeps cir­cling famil­iar Jew­ish con­cerns: how peo­ple endure, how tra­di­tion adapts, and how sto­ries rever­ber­ate across time.” ~Daniela Wexler

Eter­nal Life: A Nov­el by Dara Horn

“Eter­nal Life, a nov­el both adven­tur­ous and wise, imag­ines two immor­tals as old as the Wan­der­ing Jew who dwell among us today. Their lives retrace the jour­neys of the Jew­ish peo­ple, from Jerusalem to Anti­och to Pumbe­di­ta, in Alexan­dria and Alep­po, through Spain and Poland, to Amer­i­ca and Israel. Yet this is no alle­go­ry — it’s a love sto­ry, or many love sto­ries, with the same con­flicts and joys and heart­breaks that are part of any life.” ~Bob Goldfarb

Kan­ti­ka by Eliz­a­beth Graver

“The sto­ry of Kan­ti­ka, based on the life of Graver’s grand­moth­er, opens in Con­stan­tino­ple in 1907 and spans five decades, mak­ing stops in Barcelona and Havana but ulti­mate­ly end­ing in New York City in 1950. While mod­ern Jews every­where are suf­fer­ing as a result of the two World Wars, it’s also a peri­od of great upheaval for Sephardic Jews in Islam­ic lands — in this case, Turkey.” ~Nina B. Lichtenstein

The Empire of the Sens­es: A Nov­el by Alex­is Landau

“At once at a fam­i­ly saga, a war sto­ry, and sev­er­al love sto­ries, Alex­is Landau’s riv­et­ing debut, The Empire of the Sens­es, paints a sweep­ing yet inti­mate por­trait of pre-World War II Berlin through the eyes of the Pearl­mut­ter fam­i­ly.” ~Bec­ca Kantor

The Famil­iar by Leigh Bardugo

“Leigh Bar­dugo illu­mi­nates Madrid with rich his­tor­i­cal and sen­so­r­i­al details. Set­tings like the larder in the Ordoños house in which Luzia sleeps and the lav­ish palace of the king’s fal­l­en-from-grace sec­re­tary immerse read­ers in the tex­tures of this time. Luzia’s sto­ry of hope, con­nec­tion, and mir­a­cles large and small will stay with us in our own world, where we so often wear many faces to sur­vive.” ~Simona Zaretsky

Rebel Daugh­ter by Lori Banov Kaufmann

“Esther Bat Hanan, the hero­ine of Lori Banov Kaufmann’s his­tor­i­cal nov­el for young adults, Rebel Daugh­ter, is the daugh­ter of a Tem­ple priest in Jerusalem dur­ing the trag­ic Jew­ish War against Roman occu­pa­tion. Between 66 and 70 C.E., the colony of Judea was torn by inter­nal fac­tions but ulti­mate­ly chose to fight against the over­whelm­ing pow­er of the Roman Empire.” ~Emi­ly Schneider

Exo­dus by Leon Uris

“Exo­dus is an inter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ing phe­nom­e­non — the tow­er­ing nov­el of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s most dra­mat­ic geopo­lit­i­cal event. Leon Uris mag­nif­i­cent­ly por­trays the birth of a new nation in the midst of ene­mies — the begin­ning of an earth­shak­ing strug­gle for pow­er.” ~From the Publisher

Sons and Daugh­ters by Chaim Grade, trans­lat­ed by Rose Waldman

“Every char­ac­ter mat­ters in Sons and Daugh­ters; each is giv­en their own moment to grap­ple with a soci­ety rife with pover­ty, war, iso­la­tion, and loss of faith. Through them, we see evi­dence of the Katzenel­len­bo­gen family’s widen­ing world; these inter­con­nect­ed sto­ries weave a com­pli­cat­ed tapes­try of argu­ments and friend­ships and unspo­ken con­fes­sions.” ~Isado­ra Kianovsky

The Fam­i­ly Mor­fawitz by Daniel H. Turtel

“Enter­tain­ing­ly louche as this nov­el may be, it does seem to be ask­ing us, as Jews, an impor­tant ques­tion: in our own quest for the Olympian, what­ev­er that may be, do we risk sur­ren­der­ing some­thing essen­tial­ly Jew­ish? Or, to frame it more uni­ver­sal­ly, is it the out­side world we should be wary of, like the con­tem­po­rary gods of the Mor­fawitz clan, or is it the dark­ness with­in our­selves?” ~Angus Smith

The Pome­gran­ate Gate by Ariel Kaplan

“Com­bin­ing his­to­ry and fan­ta­sy, the nov­el fol­lows Jew­ish char­ac­ters who are reject­ed and relent­less­ly pur­sued by the world of Chris­t­ian Spain. A young Jew­ish woman named Toba enters the realm of the Maziks, mag­i­cal crea­tures with pow­ers men­ac­ing enough to rival those of the Inqui­si­tion. Toba’s place in their realm is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by her unusu­al past.” ~Emi­ly Schneider

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

“The beau­ty of this sto­ry is in the vari­ety of its milieus and sen­si­bil­i­ties. As we fol­low our female pro­tag­o­nists of both the sev­en­teenth and twen­­ty-first cen­turies — Ester Velasquez and Helen Watt, respec­tive­ly — we also wit­ness the goings-on of a ven­er­a­ble and drafty house of a rab­bi in 1660s Lon­don, and glimpse the mod­ern life of a cheeky young Amer­i­can man with heartrend­ing trou­bles of his own.” ~Kristin Gibbons

Hotel Cuba by Aaron Hamburger

“When US immi­gra­tion rules change, the sis­ters reroute to Cuba. It’s only nine­ty miles from Amer­i­ca; how hard can it be, they think, to make it to the US from there? What fol­lows sheds light on the lit­­tle-known Jew­ish dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty of Cuba. Hamburger’s depic­tion of 1920s Havana is sul­try, vibrant, and bril­liant­ly drawn.” ~Jessie Szalay

The Fire Agent by David Baerwald

“The book is suf­fused with ten­der­ness, as much a study of an individual’s place in his­to­ry as an explo­ration of the epic sweep of glob­al events. And this is what Baer­wald does best: demon­strate that, no mat­ter what we try to do, there is only so much con­trol we can exert on our world. What mat­ters is how we respond to the events out­side of our con­trol, who we choose to hold close, and who we can’t help but push away.” ~Joshua Geller Schwartz

The Dis­si­dent by Paul Goldberg

“The Dis­si­dent con­jures the repres­sive Sovi­et Union of the 1970s, a crit­i­cal inter­val in mod­ern Jew­ish his­to­ry at the thresh­old of mass Jew­ish emi­gra­tion and the 1991 fall of the Sovi­et Union. Gold­berg focus­es on a group of refuseniks and on the sur­veil­lance-obsessed polit­i­cal world of pre-glas­nost Rus­sia, at the end of the Sovi­et empire.” ~Don­ald Weber