Sheltering an escaped German prisoner of war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Arkansas. While patriotic feelings run high, Patty risks losing family, friends - even her freedom - for this dangerous friendship.

Joseph Heller's powerful, wonderfully funny, deeply moving novel is the story of David -- yes, King David -- but as you've never seen him before. You already know David as the legendary warrior king of Israel, husband of Bathsheba, and father of Solomon; now meet David as he really the cocky Jewish kid, the plagiarized poet, and the Jewish father. Listen as David tells his own story, a story both relentlessly ancient and surprisingly modern, about growing up and growing old, about men and women, and about man and God. It is quintessential Heller.

Liza Goldberg is twenty-five, Jewish, heterosexual--and unhappy. She is also a bulimic caught in a self-destructive cycle of alternately binging and starving herself. This novel tells of her discovering her lesbian identity, and of the people in her life, her first female lover, Anemone; Harvey, her gay roommate; and the nursery school kids from whom Liza sneaks peanut butter snacks.

Norman is the clever one of a close-knit Jewish family in the East End of London. Infant prodigy; brilliant barrister; the apple of his parents' eyes... until at forty-one he becomes a drug addict, confined to his bedroom, at the mercy of his hallucinations and paranoia. For Norman, his committal to a mental hospital represents the ultimate act of betrayal. For Rbbi Zweck, Norman's father, his son's deterioration is a bitter reminder of his own guilt and failure. Only Bella, the unmarried sister, still in her childhood white ankle socks, can reach across the abyss of pain to bring father and son the elusive peace which they both desperately crave.

THROUGH THE GREAT WAR AND THE DEPRESSION, THE SANDBERGS REACH OUT FOR THE BITTER AND THE SWEET OF LIFE--THE ALMONDS AND THE RAISINS.

Set in post-war London, The Limits of Love is an examination of the lives and tensions of several Jewish families. Otto Kahane, a Dachau refugee, his nephew, delicatessen-keeper Isidore, Ben the zealous Communist, Paul the reluctant Jew and his girl-friend, Julia--Frederic Raphael probes the characters and their shifting relationships with a touch at once clinical and sympathetic. His long, intricately woven novel displays the same gift for detail and dialogue that characterizes all the work of this talented writer.

From Publishers Weekly With this first installment in a projected trilogy, the prolific author (The Patriarch) once again depicts immigrant Jews assimilating in Great Britain. A rabbi's son and former yeshiva student who himself emigrated some years ago from Russia to the United Kingdom, Bermant is a shrewd but loving storyteller, and he limns WW II Britain and the Jewish milieu with acuity, buoying a familiar coming-of-age plot with wry humor and deft characterization. Foremost among the engaging, authentic characters is his protagonist Sammy Hoch, or Titch, whose Yiddish-speaking parents, "making desperate efforts to turn native," address him only in English, "with the result that until I was about six we were virtually incommunicado." Short and bookish, and afflicted with the double burden of being Jewish and Polish by birth, Titch enlists in the British army but ends up, alas, in a Polish army regiment stationed in Britain. There he is made acolyte to an apostate rabbi, an immigrant who assumed an ecclesiastic role as a ticket to England (if his sponsors "had asked me to become a juggler, I would have become a juggler, and I would probably have enjoyed it more"). Bermant followers won't be surprised that Titch's "most important experience of the war" is an encounter with a married woman. Readers will be eager to pursue Titch and his adventures in the forthcoming sequels. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal This is the first installment of a trilogy by the author of The Patriarch and other novels of Jewish life in Great Britain. In 1925, young Sammy Hoch travels with his parents and sister Sosh from Poland to Manchester, England. Sammyor "Titch," as his sister Sosh lovingly calls himsees himself as too short, too bookish, too Jewish, too foreign. His parents are repressive, his sister Sosh shrewish. After a shining academic career, Titch looks forward to escaping his past with a military career in World War II. Unfortunately, after a stint in the British army, Titch gets called up by the Polish armyand confusion and hilarity result. Titch's attempts at romance are amusing, colorful, and droll, his descriptions of wartime Britain revealing. Bermant does portray Jewish values as burdensome, but then this is only the first of the trilogy. Recommended. Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.