"This novel has a laugh track; Adler's a good storyteller and has an ear for the rhythms of a good joke." -Jewish Journal18-year-old Mickey Fine and 17-year-old Mutzie Feder desperately want to escape their drab lives in 1937 Brooklyn. He wants to be a world-famous comic and she is longing to have the glamorous life she sees embodied by her idol on the silver screen, Jean Harlow. Mickey gets his chance when he is hired to be the resident social director and comedian, otherwise known as a "tumler" at the famed Catskills resort, Gorlicks Greenhouse. Mutzie gets her opportunity when she is chosen to be "the number one girl" of notorious hit-man "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss or "Pep". That summer, Pep travels with Mutzie, his Murder Incorporated cohorts and their families for an extended holiday at Gorlicks. As the season progresses and Strauss has to leave on weekdays for "business reasons", Mickey and Mutzie begin to fall hard for each other. As their feelings grow, so do Pep's suspicions. They must find a way out before Pep marks them both for death.

American cancer specialist Dr. Alex Cousins is on a covert mission to the USSR. His task: to save the life of Soviet Politburo Chief Viktor Moiseyevich Dimitrov. But the tenuous alliance between the two crumbles one night. Alex stumbles upon Dimitrov's sinister plans for a nuclear strike on China. The Russians dispatch Alex on a six-thousand-mile journey aboard the infamous Trans-Siberian Express - thus ensuring he won't get home in time to warn the US of the imminent attack.As the train lumbers east across snow-cloaked mountains, watchful eyes rest on the American doctor. Surrounding him are people beaten and broken by life, each drawn to this emperor of trains in search of a brighter future. But most curious is Anna Petrovna Valentinova, the hauntingly beautiful history professor.The Trans-Siberian Express roars onward through a cavern of hopes and memories. A train attendant yearns for love, a persecuted Jewish couple runs to a new home, and a passionate romance transcending political barriers unfolds under KGB surveillance.

A firebombing of a black church in Brooklyn that was once a synagogue sets off a chain reaction of international intrigue and bloody violence. The fire bombers are young men of Arab extraction who mistakenly believe that this church whose stain glass windows illustrate the Stars of David is still a synagogue. In the wake of the bombing a prominent "white shoe" Wall Street firm sends its young token Jewish lawyer to help the church pro bono in their insurance claim. In a walled off area exposed by the fire in the basement of the Church the pastor has found three huge trunks filled with gold and precious jewels worth multimillions. The bizarre journey of this treasure, where it has come from and how it got in the basement of a black church is the heart of this tantalizing story which deals with both the origin and the aftermath of the discovery, and the impact it has on the lives of the young lawyer, his family, the pastor of the Church and numerous other interlocking characters who suddenly surface with claims to its provenance. It makes for a compelling and suspenseful story of terror and greed and illustrates how the long tail of the past can reach into the present with life altering results.