arts&life

books/on the cover

The JN’s annual compendium of what to read this summer
— from poolside page-turners to substantial thinkers.

LYNNE KONSTANTIN ARTS & LIFE EDITOR

FICTION

• Israeli author Nir Hezroni contin-
ues the story of former Israeli secret
service operative Agent 10483 in
the thriller Last Instructions (St.
Martin’s Press).
• In Memento Park (Farrar Straus
Giroux), Mark Sarvas tells the story
of a second-generation Hungarian
American and B-list actor who dis-
covers that a famous painting may
have been looted from his family’s
Budapest home during World War
II — forcing him to also examine
his own identity.
• In Melvyn Westreich’s first
novel, Murder in the Kollel (Laurel
Publishing), the author takes read-
ers into the world of ultra-Orthodox
Judaism by way of murder mystery.
An ex-cop-turned-Yeshiva student
teams up with a widowed com-
puter expert to find the murderer of
Rabbi Avraham Klein, rabbi of the
Kollel in Lansing, Mich.
• In My Mother’s Son (Fig Tree
Books), David Hirshberg tells a
coming-of-age story against the
backdrop of the Korean War, the
aftermath of the Holocaust and the
polio epidemic, all told by a radio
raconteur revisiting his past in post-
World War II Boston.
• In provincial France, before
World War I, shy artist Suzanne
becomes entranced by the brilliant
but troubled Lucie, who comes
from a family of wealthy Jewish
intellectuals. Their clandestine love
affair takes them to Paris, where
they reinvent themselves as Claude

Cahun and Marcel Moore — and
meet everyone from Hemingway to
Dali to Andre Breton, themselves
producing groundbreaking art —
before the rise of anti-Semitism and
create a campaign of propaganda
against Hitler. Based on a true story,
in Never Anyone But You (Other
Press), author Rupert Thomson
infuses life into a forgotten history.
• In 1913 New York City, struggling
Jewish immigrant Sadie Schuster
loves ballroom dancing, the mov-
ing pictures — and talking to her
late husband. She also crafts magic
love knots until she realizes she
could use some passion in her own
life. Warmly comical, Sadie in Love
(Aubade; due in paperback in July)
by Rochelle Distelheim is a Yiddish
folktale of magic, love and hope.
• Berlin-born Paul Bertram
returns to the city after the Wall
comes down, along with his ex-wife,
to confront past wounds inflicted
by events during World War II.
In Roberta Silman’s Secrets and
Shadows (Campden Hill Books),
the author explores how past trau-
mas never remain in the past.
• In The Astronaut’s Son
(Woodhall Press; due Sept. 2018),
Tom Seigel puts a fictitious Israeli
astronaut on the last Apollo mis-
sion in 1974. His pre-launch death
forces his son to grapple with
NASA’s checkered past — inspired
by the true story of ex-Nazis and
engineers at NASA.
• Acclaimed science reporter
William M. Katzenelenbogen finds

his life in a tailspin after losing his
job at the Washington Post, but
believes he’s found a way to revive
his career. In The Chateau (Picador
Hardcover), author Paul Goldberg
follows Bill as he investigates
the mysterious death of a plastic
surgeon, while helping his father
infiltrate a seedy condo board in
Florida.
• New York Times best-selling
author B.A. Shapiro (The Muralist,
The Art Forger) has created
another historical art thriller: The
Collector’s Apprentice (Algonquin
Books; due October 2018) takes
readers to the world of Gertrude
Stein’s Parisian salon in the 1920s.
Loosely inspired by the lives of art
collector Albert Barnes and his
assistant, Violette de Mazia, the
novel is a seamless blend of art his-
tory set against a wider historical
backdrop.
• In her first novel in nearly 18
years, New York Times best-selling
author Rosellen Brown (author
of Tender Mercies and Before and
After) has penned The Lake on
Fire (Sarabande Books; due Oct.
2018). Nineteenth-century Jewish
immigrants Chaya and her bril-
liant brother Asher flee their failing
Wisconsin farm for industrialized
Chicago, where they depend on fac-
tory work and pickpocketing while
surrounded by the extravagance of
the Columbian Exposition.
• Jenna Blum, author of the
Holocaust-suffused Those Who Save
Us, returns with The Lost Family
(Harper). A debonair New York chef,
an Auschwitz survivor, builds a new
family while still grieving the one he
lost in Europe.
• The Colorado Rocky Mountains
provide the backdrop for this
Jewish coming-of-age novel about
idealism and coming to terms with
the world. In Heather Abel’s The
Optimistic Decade (Algonquin
Books), five characters come
together at a remote summer camp,
while world events rage around
them.

jn

June 21 • 2018

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