Steve Stern’s "A Fool’s Kabbalah" is a crushing, startling novel about intellectual and spiritual defiance in the face of unbearable cruelties. On a scholarly scavenging expedition through Europe, famed kabbalist Gershom Scholem... Read More

In Roger Celestin’s haunting novel "The Delicate Beast", a man’s early experiences in the Tropical Republic are contrasted with his life in exile in the United States and Europe. A boy grows up in the Tropical Republic in the 1950s,... Read More

A tantalizing smorgasbord of culinary memories, Karolina Ramqvist’s memoir discusses family and community love in terms of shared dishes. Ramqvist’s earliest recollections speak to her enduring love of food: “when I ate something... Read More

Laden with symbolism, Jen Doktorski’s heartrending novel "Finding Normal" follows two teenagers with disordered eating on a cross-country road trip. Gemma is sick of living on the hospital’s eating disorder floor. Forced to do group... Read More

Stephanie Carpenter’s compelling novel "Moral Treatment" explores curative and troubling therapies in a Michigan psychiatric hospital alongside the institutionalization of a young patient. In 1889, seventeen-year-old Amy is certified... Read More

Shifting between Nigeria and the US, Olufunke Grace Bankole’s novel "The Edge of Water" is about the separation and reunion of mothers and daughters. Esther details her experience of motherhood through letters to her daughter Amina,... Read More

In Eva Menasse’s historical novel "Darkenbloom", the wartime secrets of a small Austrian town are compromised by the urgent demands of the present. The book begins in 1989 in the Austrian village of Darkenbloom. Though it’s no longer... Read More

A favored son longs to be accepted by his resentful brothers in "Seventeen Spoons", the moving second novel of Esther Goldenberg’s epic biblical trilogy. Joseph, longed for for ages, receives special treatment from his parents, earning... Read More