New Titles April 2023
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Click/tap the image to view a PDF for more synopses of the latest additions to the library. |
FICTION
Small World by Laura Zigman
A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she’s developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she’s moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment. Temporarily. Just until she finds a place of her own. But their unlikely cohabitation—not helped by annoying new neighbors upstairs— turns out to be the post-divorce rebound relationship Joyce hadn’t planned on. Instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frays. And they rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only ten years old. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course correct their connection for the future?
Other new titles:
- Take What You Need by Idra Novey
- Shelf Life by Martin Sneider
- The Only Daughter by A.B Yehoshua
- Kantika by Elizabeth Graver
- The Librarian Of Burned Books by Brianna Labuskes
NON-FICTION
The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America by Sandra Fox
In the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators and rabbis contended that without educational interventions, Judaism as they understood it would disappear altogether. They pinned their hopes on residential summer camps for Jewish youth: institutions that sprang up across the U.S. in the postwar decades as places for children and teenagers to socialize, recreate, and experience Jewish culture. Adults’ fears, hopes, and dreams about the Jewish future inflected every element of camp life, from the languages they taught to what was encouraged romantically and permitted sexually. But adult plans did not constitute everything that occurred at camp: children and teenagers also shaped these sleepaway camps to mirror their own desires and interests and decided whether to accept or resist the ideas and ideologies their camp leaders promoted. Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.
Other new titles:
- Yiddish Lives On: Strategies Of Language Transmission by Rebecca Margolis
- The Sages: Character, Context, And Creativity Vol. 5: The Yeshivot Of Babylonia And Israel by Binyamin Lau
- Ilse Koch On Trial: Making The “Bitch Of Buchenwald” by Tomaz Jardim
- Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew by Jeremy Dauber
- Sidney Reilly: Master Spy by Benny Morris
- Unearthed: A Lost Actress, A Forbidden Book, And A Search For Life In The Shadow Of The Holocaust by Meryl Frank
- Clara At The Door With A Revolver: The Scandalous Black Suspect, The Exemplary White Son, And The Murder That Shocked Toronto by Carolyn Whitzman
- Rain Of Ash: Roma, Jew, And The Holocaust by Ari Joskowicz
- England’s Jews: Finance, Violence, And The Crown In The Thirteenth Century by John Tolan
- The True Adventures Of Gidon Lev: Rascal, Holocaust Survivor, Optimist by Julie Gray and Gidon Lev
- The Diary Keepers: World War Ii In The Netherlands, As Written By The People Who Lived Through It by Nina Siegal
- Impossible Takes Longer: 75 Years After Its Creation, Has Israel Fulfilled Its Founder’s Dreams by Daniel Gordis
- Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner
- Beethoven In The Bunker: Musicians Under The Nazi Regime by Fred Brouwers
YOUNG ADULT
Questions I Am Asked About The Holocaust by Hédi Fried
Hédi Fried was nineteen when the Nazis arrested her family and transported them to Auschwitz. While there, apart from enduring the daily horrors at the concentration camp, she and her sister were forced into hard labor before being released at the end of the war. After settling in Sweden, Hédi devoted her life to educating young people about the Holocaust. In her 90s, she decided to take the most common questions, and her answers, and turn them into a book so that children all over the world could understand what had happened. This is a deeply human book that urges us never to forget and never to repeat.
JUVENILE
A Gefilte Fishy Tale by Allison and Wayne Marks
It’s Friday morning and, as usual, Bubbe Judy has brought home a giant jar of gefilte fish-her grandson Jack’s favorite dish-for the family’s Shabbos meal. But something is wrong: the lid is stuck. Oy! That’s when the excitement begins! Bubbe, Zayde, and Jack-along with their dog, Butterscotch schlep (drag) the jar all over town, seeking assistance from a dentist, a bodybuilder, an inventor, and other friends. But no one can unscrew that lid. Such tsuris (grief)! When aunts, uncles, and cousins arrive for dinner, they try to help, too. Giggles and groans fill the air as everyone takes a turn. Will that lid ever pop off? Find out in this humorous, rhyming picture book for Shabbat, lightly sprinkled with Yiddish. More fun is inside with a recipe for delicious gefilte fish mini muffins, a new song for Shabbos, and a Yiddish-English glossary for the whole mishpocha.
Other new titles:
- Yonah And The Mikvah Fish by Haviva Ner-David and Rachel Stock Spilker
- A Gefilte Fishy Tale by Allison and Wayne Marks
- Dragons Don’t Celebrate Passover by Michelle Franklin
- Debbie’s Song: The Debbie Friedman Story by Ellen Leventhal
- Nuri And The Whale by Ronit Chacham