Category

Religious and Spiritual Fiction

Barney
Barney Panofsky—Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur—is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three...
Be Near Me

Be Near Me 2008

"Always trust a stranger," said David’s mother when he returned from Rome. "It’s the people you know who let you down." Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he...
Bitter Orange Tree
From Man Booker International Prize–winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in...
The Boston Girl
Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take...
A Change of Climate
Ralph and Anna Eldred are an exemplary couple, devoting themselves to doing good. Thirty years ago as missionaries in Africa, the worst that could happen did. Shattered by their encounter with inexplicable evil, they returned to England, never to speak of it again. But when Ralph falls into an...
The Counterlife
The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative...
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
When Frances Shore moves to Saudi Arabia, she settles in a nondescript sublet, sure that common sense and an open mind will serve her well with her Muslim neighbors. But in the dim, airless flat, Frances spends lonely days writing in her diary, hearing the sounds of sobs through the pipes from the...
Every Day Is Mother
Axon Family, Book 1
Evelyn Axon and her daughter, Muriel, barricaded in their once-respectable house, are surrounded by years of garbage―and plenty of family secrets, to boot. They completely baffle Isabel Field, the social worker assigned to help them. But Isabel has troubles of her own: an elderly father who wanders...
Everyman

Everyman 2006

A successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter from a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely...
Family and Friends
In an ambitious departure from her usual form, Anita Brookner expands her canvas in Family and Friends to create a richly textured novel about the life of a wealthy Jewish family in London, focusing on the generation that came to maturity between the two World Wars. Presiding over the Dorn...
The Fifth Mountain
In The Fifth Mountain, Paulo Coelho takes us back to the ninth century, to the turbulent Middle East, where the prophet Elijah is struggling to keep his faith alive in a world of constant upheaval, tyrannical royalty, and pagan gods. Elijah’s story is a lesson in persistence, an exercise in hope,...
Fire in the Blood
From the celebrated author of the international bestseller Suite Française, a newly discovered novel, a story of passion and long-kept secrets, set against the background of a rural French village in the years before World War II. Written in 1941, Fire in the Blood – only now assembled in its...
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic amusement park ride accident in an attempt to save a little girl’s life. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by both loved ones and distant...
The Gospel According to the Son
Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ’s story in his...
A History of Loneliness
The riveting narrative of an honorable Irish priest who finds the church collapsing around him at a pivotal moment in its history Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland...
J

J 2015

Kevern Cohen doesn’t know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place to be asking questions. When the extravagantly beautiful Ailinn Solomons arrives in his village by a sea that laps no other shore,...
Jezebel

Jezebel 2012

A stunning novel about mothers and daughters, about vengeance, and an aging, still beautiful woman on trial for shooting her lover. In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she remains striking, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting...
Kalooki Nights
Growing up, Max is surrounded by Jews, each with an entirely different and outspoken view on what it means to be Jewish. His mother, incessantly preoccupied with a card game called Kalooki, only begrudgingly puts the deck away on the High Holy Days. Max's father, a failed boxer prone to spontaneous...
All Our Worldly Goods
In haunting ways, this gorgeous novel prefigures Irène Némirovsky’s masterpiece Suite Française. Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers....
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Mitch Albom creates his most unforgettable fictional character—Frankie Presto, the greatest guitarist to ever walk the earth—in this magical novel about the bands we join in life and the power of talent to change our lives. In his most stunning novel yet, the voice of Music narrates the tale of its...
Marjorie Morningstar
A starry-eyed young beauty, Marjorie Morgenstern is nineteen years old when she leaves home to accept the job of her dreams--working in a summer-stock company for Noel Airman, its talented and intensely charismatic director. Released from the social constraints of her traditional Jewish family, and...
More Than I Love My Life
More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili—abandoned by Nina when she was just...
Moses, Man of the Mountain
In this novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith.
Moving Kings
One of the boldest voices of his generation, Joshua Cohen returns with Moving Kings, a powerful and provocative novel that interweaves, in profoundly intimate terms, the housing crisis in America’s poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods with the world's oldest conflict, in the Middle East. The year...
Operation Shylock
In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own...
Our Lady of the Forest
Ann Holmes is a fragile teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate....
A Place to Hide
Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family, settled into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. Then in 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, he is assigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam. Teddy’s job is to process visa...
The Prodigal Child
Set in what was then contemporary Russia at the turn of the century, in a large port town on the Black Sea, The Prodigal Child is a story of a boy with a gift for composing poetry and songs—his inspiration drawn from within—who attracts the attention of a Princess. This wealthy and sophisticated...
The Red Tent
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the...
Stockholm

Stockholm 2024

Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There’s just one problem—he’s dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize must stay within his grasp, and so conspire to conceal Avishay’s corpse until the committee’s announcement. The potential of a glorious legacy for their late...
Vacant Possession
Axon Family, Book 2
Ten years have passed since Muriel Axon was locked away for society's protection, but psychiatric confinement has only increased her malice and ingenuity. At last free, she sets into motion an intricate plan to exact revenge on those who had her put away. Her former social worker, Isabel, and her...
The Valkyries
Why is it that we destroy the things we love most? This is the question Paulo Coelho faces in this touching story about his confrontation with his past. In The Valkyries, Paulo and his wife, Cristina, embark on a forty-day quest into the starkly beautiful and sometimes dangerous Mojave Desert, where...
The Wine of Solitude
Beginning in a fictionalized Kiev, The Wine of Solitude follows the Karol family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Hélène grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into a strongwilled young woman. From the hot Kiev summers to the cruel winters of St Petersburg and eventually to...
Witz

Witz 2010

By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish...

There are no books rated in this category

A Place to Hide

A Place to Hide September 2, 2025

Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan is the scion of a wealthy Washington, D.C. family, settled into a comfortable job at the State Department and a placid diplomat’s career. Then in 1938, as Hitler’s inexorable rise continues, he is assigned to the US Consulate in Amsterdam. Teddy’s job is to process visa...
Stockholm

Stockholm December 17, 2024

Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There’s just one problem—he’s dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize must stay within his grasp, and so conspire to conceal Avishay’s corpse until the committee’s announcement. The potential of a glorious legacy for their late...
Bitter Orange Tree

Bitter Orange Tree May 10, 2022

From Man Booker International Prize–winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in...
The Prodigal Child

The Prodigal Child October 19, 2021

Set in what was then contemporary Russia at the turn of the century, in a large port town on the Black Sea, The Prodigal Child is a story of a boy with a gift for composing poetry and songs—his inspiration drawn from within—who attracts the attention of a Princess. This wealthy and sophisticated...
More Than I Love My Life

More Than I Love My Life August 24, 2021

More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili—abandoned by Nina when she was just...
Moving Kings

Moving Kings August 7, 2018

One of the boldest voices of his generation, Joshua Cohen returns with Moving Kings, a powerful and provocative novel that interweaves, in profoundly intimate terms, the housing crisis in America’s poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods with the world's oldest conflict, in the Middle East. The year...
A History of Loneliness
The riveting narrative of an honorable Irish priest who finds the church collapsing around him at a pivotal moment in its history Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland...
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Mitch Albom creates his most unforgettable fictional character—Frankie Presto, the greatest guitarist to ever walk the earth—in this magical novel about the bands we join in life and the power of talent to change our lives. In his most stunning novel yet, the voice of Music narrates the tale of its...
J

J September 1, 2015

Kevern Cohen doesn’t know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place to be asking questions. When the extravagantly beautiful Ailinn Solomons arrives in his village by a sea that laps no other shore,...
The Boston Girl

The Boston Girl December 9, 2014

Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take...
The Wine of Solitude

The Wine of Solitude September 18, 2012

Beginning in a fictionalized Kiev, The Wine of Solitude follows the Karol family through the Great War and the Russian Revolution, as the young Hélène grows from a dreamy, unhappy child into a strongwilled young woman. From the hot Kiev summers to the cruel winters of St Petersburg and eventually to...
Jezebel

Jezebel May 1, 2012

A stunning novel about mothers and daughters, about vengeance, and an aging, still beautiful woman on trial for shooting her lover. In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she remains striking, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting...
All Our Worldly Goods

All Our Worldly Goods September 6, 2011

In haunting ways, this gorgeous novel prefigures Irène Némirovsky’s masterpiece Suite Française. Set in France between 1910 and 1940 and first published in France in 1947, five years after the author’s death, All Our Worldly Goods is a gripping story of war, family life and star-crossed lovers....
Every Day Is Mother

Every Day Is Mother's Day August 31, 2010

Axon Family, Book 1
Evelyn Axon and her daughter, Muriel, barricaded in their once-respectable house, are surrounded by years of garbage―and plenty of family secrets, to boot. They completely baffle Isabel Field, the social worker assigned to help them. But Isabel has troubles of her own: an elderly father who wanders...
Vacant Possession

Vacant Possession August 31, 2010

Axon Family, Book 2
Ten years have passed since Muriel Axon was locked away for society's protection, but psychiatric confinement has only increased her malice and ingenuity. At last free, she sets into motion an intricate plan to exact revenge on those who had her put away. Her former social worker, Isabel, and her...
Witz

Witz May 11, 2010

By the following Passover, however, only one is still alive: Benjamin Israelien; a kindly, innocent, ignorant man-child. As he finds himself transformed into an international superstar, Jewishness becomes all the rage: matzo-ball soup is in every bowl, sidelocks are hip; and the only truly Jewish...
Barney

Barney's Version May 4, 2010

Barney Panofsky—Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur—is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three...
The Fifth Mountain

The Fifth Mountain February 10, 2009

In The Fifth Mountain, Paulo Coelho takes us back to the ninth century, to the turbulent Middle East, where the prophet Elijah is struggling to keep his faith alive in a world of constant upheaval, tyrannical royalty, and pagan gods. Elijah’s story is a lesson in persistence, an exercise in hope,...
Moses, Man of the Mountain

Moses, Man of the Mountain December 30, 2008

In this novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith.
Fire in the Blood

Fire in the Blood July 15, 2008

From the celebrated author of the international bestseller Suite Française, a newly discovered novel, a story of passion and long-kept secrets, set against the background of a rural French village in the years before World War II. Written in 1941, Fire in the Blood – only now assembled in its...
Kalooki Nights

Kalooki Nights April 22, 2008

Growing up, Max is surrounded by Jews, each with an entirely different and outspoken view on what it means to be Jewish. His mother, incessantly preoccupied with a card game called Kalooki, only begrudgingly puts the deck away on the High Holy Days. Max's father, a failed boxer prone to spontaneous...
Be Near Me

Be Near Me April 14, 2008

"Always trust a stranger," said David’s mother when he returned from Rome. "It’s the people you know who let you down." Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he...
The Red Tent

The Red Tent August 21, 2007

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood—the...
Everyman

Everyman May 9, 2006

A successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter from a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely...
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic amusement park ride accident in an attempt to save a little girl’s life. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by both loved ones and distant...
Our Lady of the Forest

Our Lady of the Forest July 27, 2004

Ann Holmes is a fragile teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate....
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

Eight Months on Ghazzah Street September 1, 2003

When Frances Shore moves to Saudi Arabia, she settles in a nondescript sublet, sure that common sense and an open mind will serve her well with her Muslim neighbors. But in the dim, airless flat, Frances spends lonely days writing in her diary, hearing the sounds of sobs through the pipes from the...
The Gospel According to the Son
Norman Mailer fused fact and fiction to create indelible portraits of such figures as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Gilmore, and Lee Harvey Oswald. In The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer reimagines, as no other modern author has, the key character of Western history. Here is Jesus Christ’s story in his...
Family and Friends

Family and Friends January 12, 1998

In an ambitious departure from her usual form, Anita Brookner expands her canvas in Family and Friends to create a richly textured novel about the life of a wealthy Jewish family in London, focusing on the generation that came to maturity between the two World Wars. Presiding over the Dorn...
The Counterlife

The Counterlife August 6, 1996

The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative...
The Valkyries

The Valkyries August 2, 1996

Why is it that we destroy the things we love most? This is the question Paulo Coelho faces in this touching story about his confrontation with his past. In The Valkyries, Paulo and his wife, Cristina, embark on a forty-day quest into the starkly beautiful and sometimes dangerous Mojave Desert, where...
Operation Shylock

Operation Shylock March 15, 1994

In this book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own...
Marjorie Morningstar

Marjorie Morningstar June 15, 1992

A starry-eyed young beauty, Marjorie Morgenstern is nineteen years old when she leaves home to accept the job of her dreams--working in a summer-stock company for Noel Airman, its talented and intensely charismatic director. Released from the social constraints of her traditional Jewish family, and...