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Jewish Women Authors

Enjoy these reads from some of the most popular Jewish women authors writing today.

The flight portfolio by Julie Orringer

"The long-awaited new work from the best-selling author of The Invisible Bridge takes us back to occupied Europe in this gripping historical novel based on the true story of Varian Fry's extraordinary attempt to save the work, and the lives, of Jewish artists fleeing the Holocaust In 1940, Varian Fry--a Harvard educated American journalist--traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Instead, he ended up stayingin France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally to Lisbon, where the refugees embarked for safer ports. Among his many clients were Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall. The Flight Portfolio opens at the Chagalls' ancient stone house in Gordes, France, as the novel's hero desperately tries to persuade them of the barbarism and tragedy descending on Europe. Masterfully crafted, exquisitely written, impossible to put down, this is historical fiction of the very first order, and resounding confirmation of Orringer's gifts as a novelist"--

An unorthodox match by Naomi Ragen

A powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. Yaakov is a man of God, a father, a Talmud scholar, and a widower. After failing to save his wife's life, he is struggling both financially and spiritually. Lola is a woman from the secular world who has suffered terrible tragedy and hardship in her life. To find her place she has turned to God and the Orthodox community in Brooklyn. She now goes by the name of Leah. Yaakov needs help to keep his home and his children in order; Leah needs a purpose and a place in the Orthodox community. They both need a partner in life, a perfect match. But the instant chemistry they share is fraught with drama and prohibition. Forces are against them while necessity pushes them together. And then there is the possibility - will love win, or won't it?

The Boston girl : a novel by Anita Diamant

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine--a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women.

Eternal life : a novel by Dara Horn

Ever since she made a deal to save her son's life in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, Rachel has been doomed to live eternally, but as her descendants develop new technologies for immortality, she realizes that, for them to live fully, she must die.

As close to us as breathing : a novel by Elizabeth Poliner

Enjoying summertime weeks of freedom at a popular Jewish beach with their children, beautiful Ada thrives away from her strict husband, while chef Vivie develops diplomatic skills, and unmarried Bec is forced to choose between family beliefs and her passion for a married man.

Strangers and cousins : a novel by Leah Hager Cohen

"A wise and joyful novel, Strangers and Cousins is about what happens when an already sprawling family hosts an even larger and more chaotic wedding: a compassionate and entertaining story about family, culture, memory, community, and the permeable linesthat define one's tribal identity"--

They may not mean to, but they do : a novel by Cathleen Schine

"Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don't just grow, they grow old. Cathleen Schin e's They May Not Mean To, but They Do is a tender, sometimes hilarious intergenerational story about searching for where you belong as your family changes with age.When Aaron dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother's loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy's college days. They didn't count on Joy suddenly becoming as willful and rebellious as their own kids. With sympathy, humor, and truth, Schine explores the intrusion ofold age into a large and loving family. They May Not Mean To, but They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together"--

Good riddance by Elinor Lipman

"In a delightful new romantic comedy from Elinor Lipman, one woman's trash becomes another woman's treasure, with deliriously entertaining results"--

The world that we knew : a novel by Alice Hoffman

"From New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman comes a beautiful story of one Jewish child refugee's flight to safety in Nazi German and her mother's impossible decision to set her free"--

Fleishman is in trouble : a novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

"Dr. Toby Fleishman wakes up each morning surrounded by women. Women who are self-actualized and independent and know what they want--and, against all odds, what they want is Toby. Who knew what kind of life awaited him once he finally extracted himself from his nightmare of a marriage? Who knew that there were women out there who would actually look at him with softness and desire? But just as the winds of his optimism are beginning to pick up, they're quickly dampened, and then extinguished, when his ex-wife, Rachel, suddenly disappears. Toby thought he knew what to expect when he moved out: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, tense co-parenting negotiations. He never thought that one day Rachel would just drop their children off at his place and never come back. As Toby tries to figure out what happened and what it means, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new, app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of a spurned husband is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to really understand where Rachel went and what really happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen it all that clearly in the first place. A searing, funny, and electric debut from one of the most exciting writers working today, Fleishman Is In Trouble is an exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of both our great wariness and our great optimism"--

Willa & Hesper by Amy Feltman

A soul-piercing debut that explores the intertwining of past and present, queerness, and coming of age in uncertain times. Willa's darkness enters Hesper's light late one night in Brooklyn. Theirs is a whirlwind romance until Willa starts to know Hesper too well, to crawl into her hidden spaces, and Hesper shuts her out. She runs, following her fractured family back to her grandfather's hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, looking for the origin story that he is no longer able to tell. But once in Tbilisi, cracks appear in her grandfather's history-and a massive flood is heading toward Georgia, threatening any hope for repair. Meanwhile, heartbroken Willa is so desperate to leave New York that she joins a group trip for Jewish twentysomethings to visit Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland, hoping to override her emotional state. When it proves to be more fraught than home, she must come to terms with her past-the ancestral past, her romantic past, and the past that can lead her forward

The female persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. At its heart, this is a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light

The ladies auxiliary by Tova Mirvis

This remarkable and assured debut tells the story of the close-knit, carefully structured world of the Orthodox community in Memphis, Tennessee, a world that unravels when Batsheva, newly widowed and a convert to Judaism, and her five-year-old daughter move in.

All this could be yours by Jami Attenberg

"From New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a sharp, funny, and emotionally powerful novel about a family reuniting at the deathbed of its patriarch. In reckoning with his secret past, can they rebuild and begin anew?"--

Feast your eyes : a novel by Myla Goldberg

After discovering photography as a teenager through her high school's photo club, Lillian rejects her parents' expectations of college and marriage and moves to New York City in 1955. When a small gallery exhibits partially nude photographs of Lillian and her daughter, Samantha, Lillian is arrested, thrust into the national spotlight, and targeted with an obscenity charge. Mother and daughter's sudden notoriety changes the course of both of their lives and especially Lillian's career as she continues a lifelong quest for artistic legitimacy and recognition. Narrated by Samantha, Feast Your Eyes reads as a collection of Samantha's memories, interviews with Lillian's friends and lovers, and excerpts from Lillian's journals and letters--a collage of stories and impressions, together amounting to an astounding portrait of a mother and an artist dedicated, above all, to a vision of beauty, truth, and authenticity

Forest dark : a novel by Nicole Krauss

Jules Epstein, a man whose drive, avidity, and outsized personality have, for sixty-eight years, been a force to be reckoned with, is undergoing a metamorphosis. In the wake of his parents' deaths, his divorce from his wife of more than thirty years, and his retirement from the New York legal firm where he was a partner, he's felt an irresistible need to give away his possessions, alarming his children and perplexing the executor of his estate. With the last of his wealth, he travels to Israel, with a nebulous plan to do something to honor his parents. In Tel Aviv, he is sidetracked by a charismatic American rabbi planning a reunion for the descendants of King David who insists that Epstein is part of that storied dynastic line. He also meets the rabbi's beautiful daughter who convinces Epstein to become involved in her own project, a film about the life of David being shot in the desert, with life-changing consequences

Divide me by zero by Lara Vapnyar

As a young girl, Katya Geller learned from her mother that math was the answer to everything. Now, at forty, she finds this wisdom tested: she has lost the love of her life, she is in the middle of a divorce, and has just found out that her mother is dying. Half-mad with grief, Katya turns to the unfinished notes for her mother's last textbook, hoping to find guidance in mathematical concepts. With humor, intelligence, and unfailing honesty, Katya traces back her life's journey: her childhood in Soviet Russia, her parents' great love, the death of her father, her mother's career as a renowned mathematician, and their immigration to the United States. She is, by turns, an adrift newlywed, an ESL teacher in an office occupied by witches and mediums, a restless wife, an accomplished writer, a flailing mother of two, a grieving daughter, and, all the while, a woman in love haunted by a question: how to parse the wild, unfathomable passion she feels through the cool logic of mathematics? Award-winning author Lara Vapnyar delivers an unabashedly frank and darkly comic tale of coming-of-age in middle age. Divide Me by Zero is almost unclassifiable--a stylistically original, genre-defying mix of classic Russian novel, American self-help book, Soviet math textbook, sly writing manual, and, at its center, an intense romance that captures the most common misfortune of all, falling in love.

Family history : a novel by Dani Shapiro

From the prodigiously gifted author of the acclaimed memoir slow motion, a stunning and brutally honest novel about one family’s harrowing recovery from devastation.

Disobedience by Naomi Alderman

"When a young photographer living in New York learns that her estranged father, a well-respected rabbi, has died, she can no longer run away from the truth, and soon sets out for the Orthodox Jewish community in London where she grew up. Back for the first time in years, Ronit can feel the disapproving eyes of the community. Especially those of her beloved cousin, Dovid, her father's favorite student and now an admired rabbi himself, and Esti, who was once her only ally in youthful rebelliousness. Now Esti is married to Dovid, and Ronit is shocked by how different they both seem, and how much greater the gulf between them is. But when old flames reignite and the shocking truth about Ronit and Esti's relationship is revealed, the past and present converge in this award-winning and critically acclaimed novel about the universality of love and faith, and the strength and sacrifice it takes to fight for what you believe in--even when it means disobedience."--Back cover

The liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

From the award-winning author of Waking Lions comes a novel about how one lie can change everything, when a teenaged girl's scream, and the false assumption that comes from it, radiates through a street, a neighborhood, and a city, and turns lives upside down.

The book of V. : a novel by Anna Solomon

"This propulsive historical novel intertwines the lives of the Bible's Queen Esther, a senator's wife in the 1970s, and a Brooklyn mother in 2016, whose stories trace surprising and moving parallels across centuries"--

Recipient of the National Medal, the nation's highest honor for libraries.