Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in eighteenth-century London: a Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves. Now he is investigating a crime of the most personal sort: the mysterious death of his estranged father, a notorious stockjobber. Between him the answers is a network of secrecy, deception and violence. Relying on brains and brawn, Weaver uncovers the beginnings of a strange new economic order based on stock speculation ...

Published in sixteen languages and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just is considered by many the single greatest novel of the Holocaust. This classic work -- long unavailable in a trade edition -- is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.

The true story of Lore Baer who as a four-year-old Jewish child was placed with a Christian family in the Dutch farm country to avoid persecution by the Nazis.

In 'the stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, even death. This is the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the centre of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-three-year old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and a weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground - and on the everyday realities he faces - Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. Moving between the smouldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children's summer camp high in the Poconos - whose 'mountain air was purified of all contaminants' - Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor's passage into personal disaster and no less exact about the condition of childhood. Through this story runs the dark question that haunts all four of Roth's late short novels, Everyman , Indignation , The Humbling , and now, Nemesis : what choices fatally shape a life? How powerless is each of us up against the force of circumstances?

A sweeping novel of love, passion, and freedom, Mitla Pass stands as an epic look at modern Middle Eastern history and is quite possibly Uris's most autobiographical work. Gideon Zadok arrives in Israel with every intention to research a new book, mend a broken marriage, and improve his dysfunctional family. But as political tensions escalate and his family is evacuated, Zadok asks to follow Israeli paratroopers to secure Mitla Pass and finds himself in the midst of one of the largest global crises of the twentieth century.

Tells the unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, & their talking cat -- a philosopher brimming with scathing humor & surprising tenderness. In Algeria in the 1930s, a cat belonging to a widowed rabbi & his daughter, Zlabya. The cat eats the family parrot & gains the ability to speak. The rabbi vows to educate him in the ways of the Torah, while the cat insists on studying the kabbalah. Zlabya falls in love with a rabbi from Paris, & soon master & cat are accompanying the newlyweds to France to meet Zlabya¿s in-laws. Their trip invites countless opportunities for the rabbi & his cat to grapple with all the important -- & trivial -- details of life. Rich with the colors, textures, & flavors of Algeria¿s Jewish community, this book brings a lost world vibrantly to life. Illus.

At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn't particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, You are no Jew. In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz's unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg's dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses-or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.

The first voice we hear in Gina B. Nahai's second novel is that of Lili, the grown daughter of a miraculous mother. When Lili was 5 and living in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, her mother, Roxanna, "had grown wings, one night when the darkness was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her." Thirteen years would pass, Lili informs us, before she would find her mother again. This short introduction serves as a framing device for the story of Roxanna's life, a life begun as a "bad-luck" child. According to her sister, Miriam the Moon, she "had been a runaway before she ever became a wife or a mother, before she came into existence or was even conceived."

In the year 1492, the Inquisition has all of Spain in its grip. After centuries of pogrom-like riots encouraged by the Church, the Jews - who have been an important part of Spanish life since the days of the Romans - are expelled from the country by royal edict. Many who wish to remain are intimidated by Church and Crown and become Catholics, but several hundred thousand choose to retain their religion and depart; given little time to flee, some perish even before they can escape from Spain. Yonah Toledano, the 15-year-old son of a celebrated Spanish silversmith, has seen his father and brother die during these terrible days - victims whose murders go almost unnoticed in a time of mass upheaval. Trapped in Spain by circumstances, he is determined to honor the memory of his family by remaining a Jew. On a donkey named Moise, Yonah begins a meandering journey, a young fugitive zigzagging across the vastness of Spain. Toiling at manual labor, he desperately tries to cling to his memories of a vanished culture. As a lonely shepherd on a mountaintop he hurls snatches of almost forgotten Hebrew at the stars, as an apprentice armorer he learns to fight like a Christian knight. Finally, as a man living in a time and land where danger from the Inquisition is everywhere, he deals with the questions that mark his past. How he discovers the answers, how he finds his way to a singular and strong Marrano woman, how he achieves a life with the outer persona of a respected Old Christian physician and the inner life of a secret Jew, is the fabric of this novel. The Last Jew is a glimpse of the past, an authentic tale of high adventure, and a tender and unforgettable love story. In it, Noah Gordon utilizes his greatest strengths, and the result is remarkable and moving.

Already considered a classic of Holocaust literature, The Seventh Well is a novel of total absorption, a heroic achievement, and one destined for literary transcendence. Fred Wander demonstrates that the survival of a single man is a collaborative enterprise, and The Seventh Well, named after the well of truth, recalls Dante's Inferno with its mesmerizing descent into evil. Its existence is a miracle.

Realizing at the moment of his conviction for a crime he did not commit that someone is determined to see him dead and another to set him free, Benjamin Weaver works to expose a conspiracy with links to the coming election.

During the struggle to create the state of Israel in 1947, Ruth Mendolsohn, who helped young refugees flee Poland in "After the War", is a member of the Haganah, a group of Israeli fighters that believes only in self-defense. Her brother thinks that terrorism is necessary to get results. War seems inevitable and both will have to fight. Will they find the security of a place they can call home?

This story takes place largely in the garden of a wealthy Jewish family in Ferrara where young Jews meet to play tennis after being forced out of the local club by Fascists. The garden becomes an island of civilization in a brutal world.

Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and nominated for the Governor-General's Award for Literature, a hilarious, swashbuckling yet powerful tale of pirates, buried treasure and a search for the Fountain of Youth, told in the ribald, philosophical voice of a 500-year-old Jewish parrot. Set in the years around 1492, Yiddish for Pirates recounts the compelling story of Moishe, a Bar Mitzvah boy who leaves home to join a ship's crew, where he meets Aaron, the polyglot parrot who becomes his near-constant companion. From a present-day Florida nursing home, this wisecracking yet poetic bird guides us through a world of pirate ships, Yiddish jokes and treasure maps. But Inquisition Spain is a dangerous time to be Jewish and Moishe joins a band of hidden Jews trying to preserve some forbidden books. He falls in love with a young woman, Sarah; though they are separated by circumstance, Moishe's wanderings are motivated as much by their connection as by his quest for loot and freedom. When all Jews are expelled from Spain, Moishe travels to the Caribbean with the ambitious Christopher Columbus, a self-made man who loves his creator. Moishe eventually becomes a pirate and seeks revenge on the Spanish while seeking the ultimate booty: the Fountain of Youth. This outstanding New Face of Fiction is filled with Jewish takes on classic pirate tales--fights, prison escapes, and exploits on the high seas--but it's also a tender love story, between Moishe and Sarah, and between Aaron and his "shoulder," Moishe. Rich with puns, colourful language, post-colonial satire and Kabbalistic hijinks, Yiddish for Pirates is also a compelling examination of mortality, memory, identity and persecution from one of this country's most talented writers.

A brand-new novel from New York Times bestselling author Robert Littell, A Plague on Both Your Houses is a thrilling tale of love and war. On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a ten-minute televised speech announcing his resignation as Soviet president. Moments later, with little pomp and less circumstance, the red flag was lowered from its floodlit perch atop the Kremlin, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Into the vacuum--before a new democracy had time to put down roots--surged the Russian mafia, supplying what the new state could not: krysha, or "roof"--protection for the privately owned businesses sprouting across the country. Rivalries turned bloody as Moscow's Jewish mafia battled the Ossete vory v zakone (literally "thieves-in-law") for control of the city. Caught up in the mayhem, Yulia, only daughter of the Jewish mafia godfather, and Roman, only son of the Ossete mafia godfather, are obliged to navigate the minefield of a star-crossed love affair as they attempt to escape a destiny that appears preordained. A Plague on Both Your Houses is the fictional story of one bloody episode in Moscow's Great Turf War, when clans fought brutally in the streets and the future of the Russian nation was anything but assured.

Welcome to Rome. It is the summer of 1978, and the Krasnansky family, bickering, tired and confused, are supposed to be passing through. Alongside thousands of other Soviet Jewish refugees – among them criminals, dissidents and refuseniks – they await passage to their new homes in the West. But escaping Communism is not so easy, especially when some of the Krasnanskys insist on bringing it with them, and even more so when their sponsor in the USA lets them down and they find that they’re no longer passing through at all. On the contrary, they’re stuck.Welcome, then, to the waiting room of your life, and to a tragic but comic tale of reckless brothers and long-suffering sisters, ailing parents and innocent children, of love affairs and criminal liaisons, of a wonderfully troubled family and a perpetually wandering people, and their epic search for a home: somewhere, anywhere – or Canada, as it turns out.The Free World is the glorious debut novel by David Bezmozgis, whose collection of stories was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and who was recently included in the New Yorker’s prestigious ‘20 under 40’ list.

Nicole Nieman has never really thought about being Jewish. Now, with the Nazis occupying France, it is the only thing on her mind. An almost endless stream of refugees comes to stay at their house, and her parents wonder if they too ought to escape over the border to switzerland or take the chance and wait it out. Then one awful day Nicole comes home from school to find her parents and her sister gone. The Nazis who have taken them are still looking for her. Where can Nicole hide? And will she ever see her family again? "A significant addition to the growing collection of children's books dealing with World War II." - The Boston Globe

In the Face of Evil In the autumn of 1940, Anna Hirsch, her friends, and her family are rounded up by the Nazis and deported from Germany into France. They are placed in Gurs, a refugee camp where conditions are inhuman. But even worse is the terror that the Jews will be relocated to one of the Nazi death camps. Relief workers arrange for Anna and the other young people to be sent to Le Chambon, a tiny village in France. There, the villagers agree to care for the Jewish children. But as the war rages on, Jews in France -- and those who shelter them -- are in increasing danger. Will Anna and her friends survive? Award-winning author Carol Matas presents a powerful and unforgettable story of courage in the face of evil.

Set in Chicago's Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park, this is the story of three families--adults and children alike--coming of age during the tumultuous, turbulent days of the Iran hostage crisis. At the close of the 1970s, the Rovners, the Wasserstroms, and the Wills-Silvermans will have to shed their pasts to cross into that new, shining decade of hope: the 80s.

A brawny, brilliant debut novel about the epic struggles of an immigrant son in a darkening world. Johannesburg, South Africa. The Great Depression. In this harsh new country, young Isaac Helger burns with fiery determination— to break out of the inner city, to buy his scarred mother the home she longs for, to find a way to realize her dream of reuniting a family torn apart. But there are terrible, unspoken secrets of the past that will haunt him as he makes his way through a society brutalized by racism, as he loses his heart to an unattainable girl from the city’s wealthiest heights and his every exit route from poverty dead-ends. When the threat of the Second World War insinuates itself with brutal force into Isaac’s reality, he will face the most important choice of his life . . . and will have to learn to live with the consequences. In this extraordinarily powerful novel, Kenneth Bonert brings alive the world of South African Jewry in all its raw energy and ribald vernacular. Comedic, searing, lyrical and with a snap-perfect ear for dialogue, The Lion Seeker is a profoundly moral exploration of how wider social forces shape us and shatter us, echoing through history with lessons that are no less relevant today than in the crucible of its time.