Inspired by the Robert De Niro film, this story spans three generations of a family of Jewish immigrants to the United States. A gang of friends discover - through trust, hard work and brutality - the true meaning of the American Dream.

New York Times bestselling author It’s 1975, and Shaltiel Feigenberg – professional storyteller, writer and beloved husband – has been abducted from his home in Brooklyn, blindfolded and tied to a chair in a dark basement. His captors, an Arab and an Italian, don’t explain why he was chosen, just that his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. As his days of waiting commence, Shaltiel resorts to what he does best, telling stories – to himself and to the men who hold his fate in their hands. A Communist brother, a childhood spent hiding from the Nazis in a cellar, the kindness of liberating Russian soldiers, the unrest of the 1960s – these are the stories that unfold in Shaltiel’s captivity, as the outside world breathlessly follows his disappearance and the police move toward a final confrontation with his captors. Wiesel’s] terse first-person, present-tense narrative will hold readers . . . With the intense contemporary action, the prisoner’s memories also bring close the sweep of Jewish history, including persecution and survival. - Booklist

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.

Daniella Goodman has lived her life in search of religious fulfillment. Steeped in Jewish teachings at a prestigious day school and an Orthodox summer camp, she finds herself far too busy with pre-med studies at the University of Pennsylvania to seek out religiously like-minded friends. Until she meets Steven, a devout Jewish scholar who prefers to be called "Shlomie." His religious interests skew toward the mystical and fanatical, and Daniella soon finds herself wrapped up in Shlomie's enthusiasm. Before long, she and Shlomie move to Israel to start a family and to further their religious education. Isolated from their friends and families and blinded by their quest for piety, Daniella, Shlomie, and their growing family become a target for one of Israel's most abusive, horrifying cults. Detective Bina Tzedek is tasked with unraveling the threads of pain, prayer, and prophecy in the most difficult case of her career. Ragen draws on the tactics of cult leaders and on victim testimony to craft this exploration of religious fanaticism, weaving togethervicious description of abuse and the Goodmans' higher-minded desires for purity.

Winner of a Jewish National Book Award and author of The List and Jacob's Oath , both of which achieved outstanding critical acclaim, NBC Special Correspondent Martin Fletcher delivers another breathtaking tale of love, war, and redemption. Tom Layne was a world-class television correspondent until his life collapsed in Sarajevo. Beaten and humiliated, he fell into a hole diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Eleven years later he returns to the Balkans to film a documentary on the man who caused his downfall: Ratko Mladic, Europe’s biggest killer since Hitler, wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity. Mysterious forces have protected Mladic for a decade, preventing his arrest, and these shadowy but deadly foes swing into action against the journalist. Tom soon falls into a web of intrigue and deceit that threatens his life as well as that of the woman he loves. Drawing upon his own experiences reporting on the wars in Bosnia and Sarajevo, Martin Fletcher has written a searing love story and a painfully authentic account of a war reporter chasing down the scoop of a lifetime.

The second novel from GG finalist and international award winner Kenneth Bonert, who brought Jewish Johannesburg to explosive life in his 2013 debut, The Lion Seeker . As the 1980s draw to a close, apartheid is in its death throes and South Africa is a maelstrom of political violence. Young Martin Helger has problems of his own. Out of place at an elite private school, he is the son of a rough-handed scrap dealer and lives in the shadow of his enigmatic brother, a neighbourhood legend. When an irresistible young American boards at the Helger home, a transfixed Martin soon finds himself wrenched out of the isolated bubble of his white privilege and thrust into the raw heart of South Africa's racial struggle. At the same time, secrets from the past begin to emerge and old sins long-buried return in terrifying new ways, tearing at the Helgers, a second-generation Jewish family, even as the larger forces of history and politics tear apart the country. Migration, terrorism, revolution, identity and memory--these are just some of the bold themes brilliantly and honestly explored in this powerful novel. At once a riveting literary thriller, a moving coming-of-age tale, and an unforgettable journey through a fascinating world , The Mandela Plot entertains and terrifies in equal measure, and resonates profoundly in light of current affairs.

Jack Lear is a predator driven by unbridled ambition. He makes a great fortune as a pioneering radio and television broadcaster, founds a network, and marries two beautiful socialites, but despite his conquests he continues to hunger for what he cannot have - the social respectability of old money. The women in his life are legion. His first marriage is to an exquisitely beautiful and shrewd WASP princess who turns him from the wealthy son of a Jewish scrap metal king into an elegant man, surrounded by tasteful trappings of wealth; his second marriage is to a lovely English aristocrat of impeccable lineage and sophisticated style, who introduces him to international high society. But nothing can ever tame Jack Lear's need to succeed, to overcome his enemies and rivals, to expand his network - until, finally, a threat from where he least expects it promises to tear his beloved empire out of his hands...

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.

In 1941, after discovering tuberculosis, Liese, is taken to a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland by her aunt. The book traces Liese¿s incarceration in the sanatorium where she meets various characters, including her Greek-Jewish friend, Antigone. Upon Nazi orders in 1942 the sanatorium expels all the Jewish patients including Liese and Antigone under the pretext to have their papers checked. However, once they arrive at a small train station in Italy, they are surrounded by German SS troops with whips and vicious dogs. An old family friend from Vienna rescues Liese by pushing her under a train. He finds shelter for Liese in an Italian village church where she encounters a dangerous sexton. She is quickly transported to a forest underground bunker where she meets a number of compelling characters and remains there until liberation by a friendly U.S. Army.

'Beautiful, lyrical, sensitive and meaningful . . . It deserves to be read and re-read.' "Los Angeles Times" Two deadly enemies - a young Arab rebel and a Jewish runaway - meet in a remote valley to begin a quest. Both have been taught since infancy to hate; to attack for self-defence. But something incredible is happening to them, something that not even the fierce shelling of the Six-Day War can intrude upon. For they are on a fantastic mission, a mission both believe has been set for them by God . . . Gripping, exciting and incredibly poignant, Smith's Gazelle is an intriguing thriller from a master of the genre.

Now available as a New Directions paperbook, Love and Terror, William Herrick's second novel with ND, both reflects and anticipates today's headlines. Terrorist kidnappings, hijackings, and dramatic rescues all form a part of the plot, but Herrick's interest lies less in tension-filled heroics than in the human cost of flawed idealism. Through the notebook of the principal terrorist, Viktor X, the complex characters of Viktor and Gabriele, for whom love and terrorism are intertwined and inseparable, are revealed. And in a series of interviews with a nameless reporter, the lives of three disillusioned revolutionaries--"the old ones," now hostages to a new brand of revolution--gradually and movingly unfold. In his earlier Shadows and Wolves (New Directions, 1980), Herrick showed us the possibility of human solutions that transcend politics. In Love and Terror he shows us why any ideology, inflexibly adhered to, makes such solutions necessary.