The newest books — by Jewish authors, about Jewish subjects or of interest to Jewish readers.
'The Tenth Justice'
FICTION
By Brad Meltzer; William Morrow and Co.; $23.
The Nature Of Blood
By Caryl Phillips; Knopf; $23.
The West Indies-native author of
en newly hired Supreme Michigan alumnus and Columbia
Court clerk Ben Addison Law School graduate, is sure to
spills the beans about an be compared to John Grisham,
upcoming court decision to Scott Throw, David Baldacci and
a wily con artist posing as a for- other lawyers now at home on the
mer clerk, he unwittingly becomes best-sellers list. While the first-
party to an elaborate scheme that time novelist moves the story
threatens the integrity of the sa- along at a quick clip and throws
in a zinger or two, making it worth
cred halls of justice.
Terrified of ruining his promis- sticking around to the end, it is
ing career, Addison refiises to turn hard to empathize with most of
himself in. Instead, he seeks the the characters who are the type
assistance of his three equally of people you dread running into
well-connected and ambitious at a high school reunion: over-
achievers with little
roommates — a senator's
sense of humor.
aide, a cub reporter, and a
BOOKS
For those hip politicos
State Department under-
familiar with life within
ling — and co-clerk Lisa in a
plan to outsnake the blackmailer, the Beltway, The Tenth Justice
who continues to hold Addison's will undoubtedly hold your at-
tention with plenty of familiar
golden-boy future in his hands.
It is not long, however, before people and places. And it is fun to
the once inseparable pals discov- take a behind the scenes gander
er how deep they have gotten at the egos and maneuvering at
themselves in. When careers are work in the nation's High Court.
put on the line and lives are at But for the majority of us hum-
stake, the tenuous nature of blinos, the story is long on Ivy
friendship and ambition are put League name-dropping and a bit
to the test as alliances shift and short on gritty intrigue.
As Lisa says near the beginning
priorities come into focus.
Author Meltzer, a University of of this caper, "This isn't The Firm,"
and sure enough, she is not far of
Leslie Joseph is a freelance editor
and an avocational reader.
— Leslie Joseph
Crossing the River and Cambridge
has previously mapped the journeys
of people whose lives have been dis-
rupted by history. In The Nature of
Blood, he shifts back and forth,
telling the tales of a German Jewish
girl during World War II, her uncle's
fight for Israeli statehood, a 16th-
century Jewish Venetian ghetto, an
Ethiopian Jewish woman settling in
Israel.
The Actual
By Saul Bellow; Viking; $17.95.
Nobel Laureate and author of
Herzog and Humboldt's Gift, Bellow
has produced a novella that tells of
the comedy and tragedy of the tenac-
ity of first love, in the cosmopolitan
Chicago "where bankers quote Ham-
let and intellectuals stumble into
wealth."
Snow In August
By Pete Hamill; Little Brown; $23.95
The author of A Drinking Life
turns his keen evocation of New
York City life to 1947 Brooklyn and
a friendship between a lonely rab-
bi and an Irish-Catholic boy.
The Dog King
By Christoph Ransmayr; Knopf $24.
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Ransmayr — born in Austria and
living in Ireland — has won Europe's
most prestigious literary award: the
Aristeion Prize, which he shared
with Salman Rushdie. A camp sur-
vivor returns to the Eastern Euro-
pean hometown where his Jewish
wife died. He lives in a villa sur-
rounded by hounds, earning him the
nickname "Dog King." A story of
flight and survival.
The Puttermesser Papers
By Cynthia Ozick; Knopf; $23.
The author of The Shawl and The
Messiah of Stockholm here tells of
the adventures of a female Don
Quixote transplanted in Manhattan.
Her fantasies more influential than
her reality, she takes Hebrew
lessons from an uncle who dies be-
fore she was born, and she makes
a golem out of the earth of her house-
plants.
LU
Sunrise Shows Late
By Eva Mekler; Bridge Works;
$21.95.
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Mekler's debut novel tells the sto-
ry of a Polish-Jewish resistance
fighter in World War II Germany
who falls in love with two very dif-
ferent men.