The ghost writer introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer infatuated with the Great Books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his idol, E.I. Lonoff. At Lonoff's, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background who turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's and who may also have been his mistress....

"In Yiddish, there is a word for it: bashert-- the person you are fated to meet. Twentysomething Benji Steiner views the concept with scepticism. But the elderly rabbi who stumbles into Benji's office one day has no such doubts. Jacob Zuckerman's late wife, Sophie, was his bashert. And now that she's gone, Rabbi Zuckerman grapples with overwhelming grief and loneliness. Touched by the rabbi's plight, Benji becomes his helper-- driving him home after...

Escaping his political opponents in a Crimean resort town, disgraced Israeli politician Baruch Kotler runs into a former friend who had him sent to the gulag 40 years prior and must reconcile with his betrayers and his own poor choices.

Carl Zwick is an aging Chicago Cubs baseball player. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his life hitting into double plays, but he's finally gotten onto the right track. Then tragedy strikes him out.
Anita Mills is a pretty single black mother just trying to get by. A random act of brutality in one of Chicago's rougher neighborhoods permanently ends her struggle.
Richard Allen Smith walks the streets of ChiTown saying God has sent him. He

...

Acclaimed by literary critic Carl Van Doren as "the most important of all immigrant novels," The Rise of David Levinsky takes place amid America's biggest and most diverse Yiddish-speaking community during the early 20th century. David Levinsky, a young Hasidic Jew struggling to master the Talmud, seeks his fortune amid the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. All the energy formerly focused on his religious studies now turns in the direction...

Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this “tightly plotted” police procedural (Chicago Tribune).
 
After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: meet his demands, or he’ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky...

"In this unique noir masterpiece by the incomparable Saul Bellow, a young man is sucked into the mysterious, heat-filled vortex of New York City. Asa Leventhal, a temporary bachelor with his wife away on a visit to her mother, attempts to find relief from a Gotham heat wave, only to be accosted in the park by a down-at-the-heels stranger who accuses Leventhal of ruining his life. Unable to shake the stranger loose, Leventhal is led by his own self-doubts...

A Canadian detective looks into a wealthy lady’s mysterious demise in “an entertaining read” (Library Journal).
 
Thanks to a noisy toilet, Benny Cooperman is pulled into a new case—when he learns that his janitor’s elderly girlfriend has died of hunger—despite having plenty of money. The question is why she couldn’t get access to it, and Benny will find himself investigating...

Otisville prison in upstate New York is the prison of choice for white-collar Jewish offenders. There's a Talmudic study group, a prayer group, a kosher deli, and the prisoners know how to game the system. When a convicted celebrity arrives, though, officials take a tougher stand against all the inmates. Will the newcomer be assassinated? Will visiting poetry professor Deborah Liston meet with harm because she saw too much? Will the minyan try to...

Feeling guilty after marrying a gentile and raising a non-Jewish child, Belski struggles with the judgments of others while trying to come to terms with his feelings, his identity, and the meaninglessness of modern life.