arts & life
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from page 31

Iowa lawyer who is dedicated to
keeping America pure, stands in
his way. Little does Will expect that
his new wife, Barbara, will form a
romantic attachment for Harry, the
man he's sworn to keep out.
■Book of Numbers (Random
House) is a 580-page novel by
Joshua Cohen. In it, a writer signs
on to ghostwrite the biography of
the founder of a world-famous tech
company. It is high-tech thriller
and "comic novel:' which takes
the reader on an involved journey
as the almost-failed writer gains
an understanding of the sinister
motives in the autobiography
project.
■Set in Miami Beach in 1972,
How Sweet It Is (Mandel Vilar
Press) by Thane Rosenbaum is a
portrait of the sun-drenched city
in an era very different from today.
His thoughtful and funny tale
involves gangsters and Holocaust
survivors, along with Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Jackie Gleason,
Meyer Lansky and someone who
may be Fidel Castro. The author,
who grew up in Miami Beach, has
an uncanny feel for the haunts of
the city and its soul.
■In her debut novel, psychologi-
cal thriller Little Black Lies (Grand
Central Publishing), Sandra Block
tells the story of Zoe Goldman, a
psychiatrist with her own haunting
memories of childhood trauma.
When a new patient sparks memo-
ries of her troubled past, Zoe must
dig into the darkest corners of her

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July 16 • 2015

mind to uncover the things she has
tried for years to suppress. Delving
into her haunting nightmares, she
realizes that the danger exists out-
side of her dreams; and in order to
survive, she must unlock the mem-
ories that she has tried to escape.

■Love and Miss
Communication (Harper Collins)
is the wickedly funny debut novel
from attorney-turned-writer Elyssa
Friedland. After a devastating
breakup with her celebrity chef
boyfriend and a crushing disap-
pointment in her career, protago-
nist Evie Rosen, overwhelmed by
the social media rat race, tosses
her computer into the Central Park
Reservoir and vows to remain
offline until her 35th birthday.
Learning to live without Google,
online dating, texts, tweets, pins
and posts, Evie discovers new pas-
sions and re-evaluates what really
matters. Part Sex and the City and
part Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce,
the story leaves readers asking the
question: What are we missing
while we're glued to our screens?
■Prize-winning historian and
internationally bestselling author
Simon Sebag Monetfiore's lat-
est novel, One Night in Winter
(Harper Perennial), is a tale of
forbidden love that unfolds in the
chilling world of Stalin's Moscow
post-World War II.
When two students of the
exclusive Josef Stalin Commute
School 801 are murdered during a
victory celebration, Stalin will stop

BIOGRAPHY
■ Cost of Courage (Other Press),
by reporter and press critic Charles
Kaiser, is the true story of one
family's courage for the French
Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris
during World War II. Using let-
ters, interviews, documents and
correspondence from the French
National Archives, the author
recounts a Catholic family's jour-
ney marked by bravery and duty.
■Steven Gimbel's Einstein
(Yale University Press) gives read-
ers a picture of the great scientist

at nothing to uncover the truth,
even if that means bringing young
students to the infamous Lubyanka
prison for questioning. Loyalties
are tested and sacrifices are made
as readers are sucked into the
fictional but very real story of the
terrors in Stalin's Russia.
■Beginning at a kibbutz in 1994
and spanning multiple centuries,
voices and histories, Safekeeping
(Figtree Books) is anchored in a
man's quest to return a medieval
sapphire brooch to his grandfather's
lost love. Author Jessamyn Hope
excels at revealing single lives, fam-
ily stories and cultural histories
through both the smallest details
and the widest dramatic arcs.
"He could see to the top of the
hill, where the road ended with
the gate to the kibbutz. A rusted,
wrought-iron sign arched over the
entrance, stamping the yellow sky
in both Hebrew and Latin letters:
Sadot Haddar. Fields of Spendor,
his grandfather had taught him."
■Alan Lelchuk's Searching for
Wallenberg (Mandel Vilar Press)
is a literary detective story and love
story about a professor/novelist
who sets out for Eastern Europe
to try his hand at investigating the
disappearance of Swedish diplomat
Raoul Wallenberg, who saved the
lives of thousands of Jews in World
War II Budapest. Along the way,
the professor meets a Hungarian
woman claiming to be Wallenberg's
daughter.
■Feminine icon and found-

ing editor of Ms. Magazine and
Hadassah life member Letty
Cottin Pogrebin is out with her
latest novel Single Jewish Male
Seeking Soul Mate (The Feminist
Press). This lyrical novel follows
Zach Levy, the left-leaning son of
Holocaust survivors who promises
his mother on her deathbed that he
will marry within the tribe.
He then falls for Cleo Scott, an
African-American activist grap-
pling with her own inherited pain.
Zach must reconcile his vow to his
mother with his love for Cleo and
demonstrates what happens when
the heart runs counter to politics,
history and the compelling weight
of tradition.
■When the late Israeli ambas-
sador Yehuda Avner heard then-
Prime Minister Shimon Peres
apologize to 6 million Jews killed
by Hitler ("We were 10 years too
late Peres said at Mount Herzl
Cemetery in Jerusalem), Avner
thought, "What if we hadn't
been?" The forthcoming novel
The Ambassador (The Toby Press,
September 2015), co-written by
award-winning crime novelist Matt
Rees, tries to answer that question.
In a fictional turn of events in
1937, the British Cabinet accepts
the recommendations of the
Peel Commission, establishing a
Jewish State in the Land of Israel.
Dan Lavi is a young diplomat
sent by Ben-Gurion to serve as
the country's first ambassador to
Berlin in to secure exit visas for

as many Jews as possible. Evoking
the immediacy and desperation of
Germany's Jews under Hitler, the
novel audaciously imagines what
would have been had the world not
failed back then.
■"How could his father die so
young? There were ex-Nazi execu-
tioners still living into their 80s,
unrepentant killers on death row
eligible for Social Security, and his
father, a fit 63, was gone. It didn't
make any sense. His father had
been a force of nature, molded out
of pure brass. Even pale and faded,
his father struck Matthew as awe-
some, frightening:'
In The Book of Stone (Figtree
Books) by Jonathan Papernick,
Matthew Stone has inherited a
troubling legacy: a gangster grand-
father and a distant father — who
also is a disgraced judge. After his
father's death, Matthew is a young
man alone. He turns to his father's
beloved books for comfort, which
draws him into unfamiliar worlds
of religious extremists, personal
peril and his family's past.
■The Weimar Republic is the
setting for Alexis Landau's debut
work, The Empire of the Senses
(Pantheon), a family drama and
historical novel. She captures the
culture and milieu of the times,
as she explores issues of culture,
assimilation, love and loyalty.
■Iranian-born young writer
Parnaz Foroutan earned PEN USA
Emerging Voices Award for her
forthcoming book, The Girl from

in the context of the world he
lived in. This politically active
and strongly principled man was
engaged in international affairs,
which kept him involved in find-
ing a way to have the worldwide
Jewish community gain confi-
dence and pride in itself.
■In Leon Blum: Prime
Minister, Socialist, Zionist (Yale
University Press), French politi-
cal sociologist Pierre Birnbaum
(author of The Anti-Semitic

only an important political leader
and social activist, but also into
a critical chapter in the larger
history of Jews in France. This
biography highlights Blum's
Jewish heritage and its impact on
his progressive politics and life, as
three-time prime minister, oppo-
nent of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime
— and survivor of Buchenwald.
■Who was Mazie Phillips? First
profiled in a 1940 New Yorker
article, the "Queen of the Bowery"
was well known to patrons of the
Venice Theater, where she sold

tickets for decades, and to the
neighborhood's addicts, drifters
and bums, whom she made it
her business to help, comfort and
harangue.
In Saint Mazie (Grand
Central Publishing), Jami
Attenberg (author of 2012's The
Middlesteins) uses fictional-
ized diary entries, reminisces of
friends and acquaintances and
sleuthing documentarian skills
to give Mazie — who frequented
Catholic masses, despite her
Jewish background — a full, com-

Moment: A Tour of France in
1898) provides insight into not