Bar Mitzvah Dreams: A Book of Poems – Baruch November

Available in Main Street Rags or Amazon.

Riverbed – Steven Pelcman

RIVERBED is about a three generational family and focuses on a grandfather, a son and a grandson all living together on a ranch in Montana, USA. These are all troubled individuals confronting their relationships from old age to father to son conflict due to their values and vision of what love and life should be about.

And there is a young boy coming of age and full of internal complications because of divorce and the inability to relate to his father. A reflection of family issues, communication and love issues and understanding one’s place in life is what this story shares. It touches upon history and the land, a lifestyle and how evolution plays a role in all of their lives. A hunting trip into the Montana mountains in late fall evolves into a life and death experience. These are characters you can relate to and emotions and psychological issues we may all experience in our lives at one time or another.

Available on Amazon.

My Name is Layla – Reyna Gentin

My Name is Layla is a refreshing look at life today for tweens or young teenagers that offers hope, even after poor choices. My Name Is Layla demonstrates that help can com

e from unexpected sources. It is a perfect book for anyone who wants to understand the pressures of eighth grade, and possibly even how to help some tweens or teens.

Buy it here.

Essentials of Jewish History – Brandon Marlon

Essentials of Jewish History is a comprehensive compendium for ready reference. Both a typology of leadership roles (prophets; prophetesses; high priests; Judges; kings; queens;

exilarchs; courtiers; Zionists; generals; sages) and a Who’s Who, its unique value is in outlining and assembling all of these discrete categories in one convenient volume. Essentials of Jewish History is an exceptionally useful resource for scholars and laypersons alike. For knowledgeable readers, it offers the advantages of its systematic organization and inclusivity of content. For readers unfamiliar with Jewish history prior to encountering this book, it affords a newfound and solid grasp of what the first 4,000 years of Jewish history entailed.

Buy it from VMBooks or IPGBooks.

*20% discount code “Marlon20” in effect until Feb. 17, 2021

A Ritchie Boy – Linda Kass

1938. Eli Stoff and his parents, Austrian Jews, escape to America just after Germany takes over their homeland. Within five years, Eli enlists in the US Army and, thanks to his understanding of the German language and culture, joins thousands of others like him who become known as Ritchie boys, young men who work undercover in Intelligence on the European front to help the Allies win World War II. In A Ritchie Boy, different characters tell interrelated stories that, together, form a cohesive narrative about the circumstances and people Eli encounters from Vienna to New York, from Ohio to Maryland to war-torn Europe, before he returns to the heartland of his new country to set down his roots.

Buy it at Gramercy Books.

Cain v. Abel:  A Jewish Courtroom Drama – Rabbi Dan Ornstein

Enter the packed courtroom and take your seat as a juror on the Cain v. Abel trial. Soon, theprosecution and defense attorneys (angels from Jewish legend) will call Cain, Abel, Sin, Adam, Eve, and God to the witness stand to hear their private perspectives on the world’s first murder. Great Jewish commentators throughout the ages will also offer contradictory testimony on Cain’s emotional, societal, and spiritual influences. As jurors, when we mete out Cain’s punishment, must we factor in his family history, psychological makeup, and the human impulse to sin?

Buy it on JPS or Amazon.

Fruit of the Earth – Jamie Wendt

In this powerful and exquisite collection of poems, Jamie Wendt, a graduate of the University of Nebraska MFA program whose poetry has been published in various literary journals including Lilith, Raleigh Review and Minerva Rising, locates the interplay between the material and spiritual inheritance of land and people through themes of place, and displacement. In poems of vivid imagery and a strong, narrative voice, her experiences and questions are lived out while allowing that there is mystery that can only be accessed by the act of choosing, and choosing again, over a lifetime. Source
Buy it at Main Street Rag.

An Epiphany in Lilacs: In the Aftermath of the Camps – Iris Dorbian

An Epiphany In Lilacs is a novel set in a displaced persons camp outside Hamburg, Germany following the end of World War II. After liberation in May 1945, Daniel, a 14-year-old Latvian Jew, is treated in a field hospital in the British zone of partitioned Germany. A survivor of various concentration camps, Daniel fights to recover from starvation and disease. Racked by nightmares, a nearly nightly occurrence, Daniel finds sleep almost impossible. Through his love of nature, and pre-war memories, Daniel struggles to find comfort. He forms an intriguing bond with an older German gentile, another survivor. Later on, as he joins a theater troupe, Daniel tries to move on with his life, yet still searching for the whereabouts of his mother and two sisters.

Buy it on Amazon.

Political – Howard Richard Debs

“Howard Richard Debs’ chapbook Political is a modern-day potpourri of Americana, comprised of a collection of experimental work including prose poetry and a short script. His works explore modern America and Americans through lyricism, finding beauty in what can often seem hideous and always seeking to understand. In some ways reminiscent of Whitman, Debs seeks to uncover America’s poetic nature through our time of political strife and division.”—Emily Jo Scalzo, Assistant Teaching Professor, Ball State University, author of The Politics of Division, a 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Awards chapbook category honorable mention

Buy it at Amazon.

The Sabbath Girl – Cary Gitter

Angie Mastrantoni has a lot going for her-a job at a hip art gallery, a new apartment on the Upper West Side-but not much time or hope for relationships. Then her neighbor Seth, a divorced Orthodox Jew with a knish store on the Lower East Side, knocks on her door. The Sabbath Girl is a contemporary romantic comedy about the loneliness of big-city life and the possibility of finding love next door.

Buy it from StageRights or Amazon.

The Lamps of History by Michael Sandler

The Lamps of History wrestles with the ambiguities—and choices—between connection/alienation, renewal/decay, and faith/doubt. Its poems explore family histories and our stance toward them as they dim, frayed bonds with our grandparents’ traditions and beliefs, and distances ingrained in our current relationships. There are also poems on our civic estrangements: an ode to a papaya that spills into America’s tribal conflict; elegies to the environment (one on disappearing phytoplankton, another on forests ravaged by pine beetles); a ghazal to a semi-automatic weapon; and a failed recipe for noodle pudding. Michael Sandler’s writing marshals wit and wordplay in a deft handling of language and form. The poetry navigates the crosscurrents of tradition and post-modernism, steering somewhat closer to the former.

Buy it on Amazon.

Love, Loss, & Ghosts – Carol Solomon

Carol Westreich Solomon announces the publication of her short fiction collection Love, Loss, & Ghosts.  Funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, this collection features sixteen stories, including the award-winning “The Fixer.”  Each story reveals a person who has lost love and found a substitute–sometimes another person, sometimes self-destructive behavior, sometimes a ghost.  The stories take place in an Orthodox Jewish community, in the Maryland suburbs, and in the Midwest, settings that frame the characters’ losses and limit their choices.

The book is available in print and digital formats on Amazon.com.

Stress Positions – Marion Cohen

Stress weighs different amounts depending on its position in your life. Many may prefer physical pain over mental anguish as it is something that can be more easily managed. The body is a temple of things spiraling out of control, and at its pinnacle, the brain collects moments of happiness and grief. Both the mental and physical are linked, and when one suffers, the other reacts accordingly.

Buy it on Amazon.

Women and God – Philip Graubart

Rabbi Moishe Weinstein of the Hebrew Theological Institute has been accused of a sexual impropriety regarding a student. Rabbi Yael Gold, a friend and former student of Moishe, is reluctantly persuaded by Miriam, the president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, to leave her home in Desert Valley, near Las Vegas, and travel to New York immediately to investigate. Yael is unsure why she has been asked to investigate the matter and is told it is because she knows Moishe well. However, she starts to realize that she doesn’t know Moishe as well as she thought when more claims of sexual impropriety surface and her investigation uncovers a complex series of events and a tangled web of dark secrets within the Jewish community. As a result, Yael is forced to look at her own life and also face some unwelcome memories from her past.

Buy it on Amazon.

Tikkun Olam – Eve Lyons

Day by day, step by step, Eve Lyons’ poems are a journey toward what is essential and enduring, to what can be of use.

Buy it on Amazon.

Why The United States Is A Morally Good Country: A View From the Center – Phil Kirshner

Did you know that the U.S. ranks 18th in the world on the UN Happiness Index, tenth on the Human Development Index, and fifth on their Education Index? Did you know that the life expectancy for people of color in the U.S. is greater than the life expectancy for white people? Did you know that more people are moving here from many of the countries with whom we are often unfavorably compared? Did you know that the middle class is shrinking not because people are falling out of it but because people are rising above it? Did you know that a British foundation ranks the U.S. as the fifth most generous nation in the world? All this and much more you will learn in this book—which builds the case that these are indications of moral goodness, and the U.S. is a morally good country.

Buy it on Amazon.

The Insolent Somnambulist – Nick Romeo

Poems by Nick Romeo

Buy it here.

The House of One Thousand Eyes, My Long List of Impossible Things, A Year of Borrowed Men – Michelle Barker

Buy them by clicking the link below each book, respectively.

Amazon                    Amazon                       Amazon

My Father’s Drawer – Jennie Mintz

A book built on memories, Mintz’s ability to excavate the “tokens [left] in her father’s drawer” serve to illuminate a history rife with things unsaid and images misunderstood.  Through deft imagery and poignant sound, Mintz builds a world across the waves, while still present, home. These “photographs [of] Childhood” not only convey what has happened, but how what transpired has inspired voice and understanding.  Family is complex and strange, yet, family is what defines past and sets us towards future.  Those who we recall, are always viewed through our own feelings surrounding them.  A poignant, beautiful book of remembrance, My Father’s Drawer is full of unsuspecting trinkets of memory, love, family waiting to be grappled with over and over.

Buy it at Finishing Line Press.

Weather & Other Poems – Erik La Prade

Erik La Prade’s new collection of poems Weather & other poems shifts effortlessly between thepastoral and the post-modern. Rarely does a poet make nature poetry so worth reading, or imbue daily life with lyric meaning. In these poems, La Prade probes his own reality and the shared reality we inhabit for glints of truth, the odd moment of insight, the fleeting glimpse of something behind the curtain.

Buy it at Last Word Press.

Living Waters, Chassidic Poems – Simcha Wasserman

‘Wasserman’s newest collection represents a robust body of work wedding deepJewish wisdomto carefully-crafted poetics. These poems stitch together the mystical and the mundane, unearthing holiness in the least expected places. Indeed, Wasserman is a poet of rare and striking combinations whose powers have only intensified over the decades.’ -Yehoshua November

Buy it at Kehot Publication Society.

Staying Whole While Falling Apart – James Gering

The book celebrates troubled all-rounder, Aaron Auslander, as he strives to find meaning and shape his identity in the midst of too many influences. Love and parenthood complicate matters, and Aaron has to find creative ways to rally and stay whole.

Buy it at Interactive Publications!

I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember – Matt Andrews                                             

Writing In The Q – Robert Granader                                       

But it at Politics Prose.                                  

Faded Love; The Second Wedding of Doctor Geneva Song; and, The Tragic Marriages of Doctor Geneva Song – Bob Friedland

They are all available on amazon.com; amazon.ca; smashwords.com; kobo.com