For all his wealth and success, Asher Malacouti--the head of a prosperous Jewish family living in the Iranian town of Kermanshah in the early twentieth century--cannot have the one thing he desires above all: a son. His young wife Rakhel, trapped in an oppressive marriage at a time when a woman's worth is measured by her fertility, is made desperate by her failure to conceive, and grows jealous and vindictive.

"Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a nice Jewish girl with a shameful secret: she loves Christmas. For a decade she's hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach. But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Hanukkah's not magical....

Examines the influence on the nation of twenty Jewish inventors, educators, artists, civil right activists, and scientists, who lived from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.

In 1939 Germany, Hanna Rombauer is sent to a "bride school" where she becomes increasingly disturbed by lessons of hatred, prejudice, and misogyny, and when she discovers a pregnant Jewish woman hiding near the school, she proposes a risky plan that would free them both.

"In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own. Emma Goldman--yes, that Emma Goldman--takes tea with the Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. In "Among the Thorns," a young...

No longer famous, journalist Cannie Shapiro writes science fiction under a pen name while raising her teenage daughter, and considers her husband Peter's request to have Cannie's flamboyant sister provide surrogate services so that they can have a secondchild.

A timely encounter with Kefira saves Josh's life. As she encourages him to pursue his dream of becoming an archaelologist, she finds her own desires coming true. But complications from their past lives threaten their budding romance ... and put their most cherished beliefs to the test.

"In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position. What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when...

"It is 1946 when Vera Frankel and her best friend Edith Ban arrive in Naples. Refugees from Hungary, they escaped from a train headed for Auschwitz and were hidden by farmers until the end of the war while the rest of their families perished. Now, they want to start new lives abroad, and armed with a letter of recommendation from an American general, Vera finds work at the United States embassy and falls in love with Captain Anton Wight. But as Vera...

Becoming a spy for the resistance after the Nazi's invade Poland, Emma Bau, taking on a new identity as a gentile, becomes a high-ranking Nazi official's assistant and, leading a double life, compromises her marriage vows, her safety, and the lives of those she loves for the cause.