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“The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” by Sarit Yishai-Levi (Thomas Dunn Books/St. Martin’s Press) Every now and then, a multi-generational novel such as “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” by Sarit Yishai-Levi (Thomas Dunn Books/St. Martin’s Press) comes along, so rich with potent curses, outlandish customs, eccentric characters, and forbidden loves, readers might find the story somewhat…

Photo is from the cover of “The Marriage of Opposites” (Simon and Schuster) Alice Hoffman’s sentences possess a musical cadence that demand to be read aloud like poetry, which I often did with great pleasure as I read “The Marriage of Opposites” (Simon and Schuster). The story of Rachel Pomié Petit Pizzarro and her son,…

It is 1980, my first night of Seder in America. I am expecting 50 guests, not a large number by Persian standards. I am, nevertheless, nervous. Mrs. Seidleman, my soon-to-be American friend, is invited tonight, and it’s imperative that the image of us Iranians as a bunch of camel-riding, uncivilized nomads, who parade American hostages…

Each of us has a bit of Lilith in us. A bit of a voice, when silence is expected of us. A bit of a desire for freedom from the conventional fences others erect around us. A bit of a need for equality, when we’ve been taught, as early as when we were children or…

In her captivating historical novel, Lisette’s List (Random House), Susan Vreeland, The New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, takes readers by the hand and guides them, with assured steps and astute historical knowledge, through the tumultuous, war-torn, years of 1937 to 1948 in Europe, depicting horrific attempts by the Nazis to…

From the opening of Anita Diamant’s heartwarming novel, The Boston Girl, (Scribner), when Addie Bauman, an 85-year-old grandmother recounts her life story to her granddaughter, I was struck by the similarities between the Jewish cultural beliefs and mores in Boston in 1915, when Addie’s story starts, and in Iran, where I grew up in the…

They have a way of scaring you, of chasing sleep away, these psychological thrillers that send your heart thumping. Imagine, then, what you are in for when two masters of the genre decide to collaborate. The result is “The Golem of Hollywood,” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) by bestselling authors Jonathan Kellerman (The Alex Delaware series) and…

I devoured all 331 pages of Ayelet Waldman’s gripping and powerful novel Love and Treasure (Alfred A. Knopf) in one 14-hour marathon on my flight from Los Angeles to Israel. Before the El Al plane made its descent into Ben Gurion Airport, I began this review with Waldman’s interview with Carolyn Kellogg for the Los…

Ah! The joys and tribulations of being surrounded by stacks of books at my bedside, my husband’s bedside, books tucked into every available nook and cranny, piled high on every tabletop and stacked double on every shelf, making it impossible to navigate around safely without worrying that one of my beloved five-pound books might tumble…