The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Author: Eve Harris
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802192661

A “stunning” portrait of life and love inside an insular Jewish community that “reads like an Orthodox Pride and Prejudice . . . Rewardingly delightful” (Bust). London, 2008. Nineteen-year-old Chani Kaufman is betrothed to Baruch Levy, a young man she’s seen only four times before their wedding day. All the cups of cold coffee and small talk with suitors have led up to this moment. But the happiness Chani and Baruch feel is outweighed by their anxiety about the realities of married life; about whether they will be able to have fewer children than Chani’s mother, who has eight daughters; and about the frightening, unspeakable secrets of the wedding night. Through the story of Chani and Baruch’s unusual courtship, we meet a very different couple: Rabbi Chaim Zilberman and his wife, Rebbetzin Rivka Zilberman. As Chani and Baruch prepare to share a lifetime, Chaim and Rivka struggle to keep their marriage alive—and all four, together with the rest of the community, face difficult decisions about the place of faith and family in the contemporary world. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and selected as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a “deeply melodic and exciting” story that “will resonate with readers from all backgrounds” and “linger after the last page” (Publishers Weekly).

Cut Me Loose

Cut Me Loose
Author: Leah Vincent
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0698192672

In the vein of Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted, an electrifying memoir about a young woman's promiscuous and self-destructive spiral after being cast out of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish family Leah Vincent was born into the Yeshivish community, a fundamentalist sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. As the daughter of an influential rabbi, Leah and her ten siblings were raised to worship two things: God and the men who ruled their world. But the tradition-bound future Leah envisioned for herself was cut short when, at sixteen, she was caught exchanging letters with a male friend, a violation of religious law that forbids contact between members of the opposite sex. Leah's parents were unforgiving. Afraid, in part, that her behavior would affect the marriage prospects of their other children, they put her on a plane and cut off ties. Cast out in New York City, without a father or husband tethering her to the Orthodox community, Leah was unprepared to navigate the freedoms of secular life. She spent the next few years using her sexuality as a way of attracting the male approval she had been conditioned to seek out as a child, while becoming increasingly unfaithful to the religious dogma of her past. Fast-paced, mesmerizing, and brutally honest, Cut Me Loose tells the story of one woman's harrowing struggle to define herself as an individual. Through Leah's eyes, we confront not only the oppressive world of religious fundamentalism, but also the broader issues that face even the most secular young women as they grapple with sexuality and identity.

Christina Rossetti's Gothic

Christina Rossetti's Gothic
Author: Serena Trowbridge
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441114432

The poetry of Christina Rossetti is often described as ‘gothic' and yet this term has rarely been examined in the specific case of Rossetti's work. Based on new readings of the full range of her writings, from ‘Goblin Market' to the devotional poems and prose works, this book explores Rossetti's use of Gothic forms and images to consider her as a Gothic writer. Christina Rossetti's Gothic analyses the poet's use of the grotesque and the spectral and the Christian roots and Pre-Raphaelite influences of Rossetti's deployment of Gothic tropes.

Invisible City

Invisible City
Author: Julia Dahl
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466841915

“An absolutely crackling, unputdownable mystery told by a narrator with one big, booming voice. I loved it.” —Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Gone Girl One of The Boston Globe’s Best Books of the Year In her riveting debut, journalist Julia Dahl—a finalist for the Edgar and Mary Higgins Clark Awards—introduces a compelling new character in search of the truth about a murder and an understanding of her own heritage Just months after Rebekah Roberts was born, her mother, an Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn, abandoned her Christian boyfriend and newborn baby to return to her religion. Neither Rebekah nor her father have heard from her since. Now a recent college graduate, Rebekah has moved to New York City to follow her dream of becoming a big-city reporter. But she’s also drawn to the idea of being closer to her mother, who might still be living in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn. Then Rebekah is called to cover the story of a murdered Hasidic woman. Rebekah’s shocked to learn that, because of the NYPD’s habit of kowtowing to the powerful ultra-Orthodox community, not only will the woman be buried without an autopsy, her killer may get away with murder. Rebekah can’t let the story end there. But getting to the truth won’t be easy—even as she immerses herself in the cloistered world where her mother grew up, it’s clear that she’s not welcome, and everyone she meets has a secret to keep from an outsider. “Fast-paced, suspenseful . . . rises above the crime-novel genre in its unusual psychological, spiritual and sociological dimensions, entering a world unfamiliar to most people.” —The Washington Post

An Unorthodox Match

An Unorthodox Match
Author: Naomi Ragen
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 125016124X

An Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiancé, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch. While her mother direly predicts she is ruining her life, enslaving herself to a community that is a misogynistic religious cult, Lola’s heart tells her something far more complicated. But it is the shocking and unexpected messages of her new community itself which will finally force her into a deeper understanding of the real choices she now faces and which will ultimately decide her fate.

The Falafel King is Dead

The Falafel King is Dead
Author: Sara Shilo
Publisher: Granta
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781846272219

A heartbreaking, prize-winning novel set in a small Israeli town near the border with Lebanon that depicts with raw power the trauma of living in constant fear of attack.

Uncovered

Uncovered
Author: Leah Lax
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2015-08-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 163152996X

Uncovered is the only memoir to tell of a gay woman leaving the hasidic fold. Told in understated, crystalline prose, Leah Lax begins her story as a young teen leaving her secular home to become a hasidic Jew, then plumbs the nuances of her arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and hasidic motherhood as, all the while, creative, sexual, and spiritual longings tremble beneath the surface.

The Devil's Library

The Devil's Library
Author: Tom Pugh
Publisher: Crux Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2016-04-20
Genre:
ISBN: 190997935X

“Pugh’s first novel is a magnificent achievement. Let us hope he returns to enthral us with another very soon.” David Dickinson, author of the Powerscourt series The Otiosi? As far as Mathew Longstaff knows, they’re just a group of harmless scholars with an eccentric interest in the works of antiquity. When they ask him to travel east, to recover a lost text from Ivan the Terrible’s private library, he can’t think of anything but the reward – home. A return to England and an end to the long years of exile and warfare. But the Otiosi are on the trail of a greater prize than Longstaff realises – the legendary ‘Devil’s Library’. And they are not alone. Gregorio Spina, the pope’s spymaster and chief censor, is obsessed with finding the Library. It’s not the accumulated wisdom of centuries he’s after – a swamp of lies and heresy in his opinion – but among the filth, like a diamond at the centre of the Devil’s black heart, Spina believes that God has placed a treasure, a weapon to defeat the Antichrist and pitch his hordes back into hell. Only Longstaff, together with the unpredictable physician, Gaetan Durant, can stop Spina using the Library to plunge Europe into a second Dark Ages. The two adventurers fight their way south, from the snowfields of Muscovy to the sun-baked plains of Italy, where an ageing scholar and his beautiful, young protégé hold the final piece of the puzzle. But is it already too late? Can the four of them take on the might of the Roman Church and hope to win?

Unexploded

Unexploded
Author: Alison MacLeod
Publisher: Clipper Audio
Total Pages:
Release: 2014-01-02
Genre: Germans
ISBN: 9781471253485

Brighton, May 1940. A time of tension and change. Geoffrey Beaumont becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp on the edge of town, his son Philip is gripped by the rumour that Hitler will make Brighton his English HQ, and his wife Evelyn meets Otto Gottlieb, a 'degenerate' German-Jewish painter imprisoned in the camp. As love collides with fear, the power of art with the forces of war, the lives of Evelyn, Otto and Geoffrey are changed irrevocably.

Montana

Montana
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 686
Release: 1927
Genre:
ISBN: