SMALL CHANGE BY YEHUDIT HENDEL

he title story, “Small Change,” is a truly horrifying look into the paranoid mind of an Israeli woman and her troubled relationship with her father. Hendel’s close attention to detail, the spareness of her writing, and her utter lack of sentimentality create a fantastic world of emotions which seem heightened and supressed at the same time. Small Change offers a compelling introduction to one of modern Israel’s finest women writers.

THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM BY MARIE BENEDICT

Hedy Kiesler is lucky. Her beauty leads to a starring role in a controversial film and marriage to a powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. But Hedy is also intelligent. At lavish Vienna dinner parties, she overhears the Third Reich's plans. One night in 1937, desperate to escape her controlling husband and the rise of the Nazis, she disguises herself and flees her husband's castle.

She lands in Hollywood, where she becomes Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But Hedy is keeping a secret even more shocking than her Jewish heritage: she is a scientist. She has an idea that might help the country and that might ease her guilt for escaping alone -- if anyone will listen to her. A powerful novel based on the incredible true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication, The Only Woman in the Room is a masterpiece. 

APPLES IN HONEY BY YEHUDIT HENDEL

 The main exception is “Apples in Honey,” a story set in a cemetery that features a war widow visiting her husband’s grave. This is essentially a tale about private emotions, but it has special poignancy as it takes place in Israel, where so many women have lost husbands through war.

A WOMAN IS NO MAN BY ETAF RUM

This debut novel by an Arab-American voice,takes us inside the lives of conservative Arab women living in America.

In Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.

SHRINKING BY RUTH ALMOG

Ruth Almog's "Shrinking" portrays the loneliness and frustration of a middle-aged heroine whose longing for genuine human contact is thwarted by her stifling bond to her aged father.

INVISIBLE MENDING BY RUTH ALMOG

Invisible Mending

Ruth Almog The aching vulnerability of childhood and the ravages of exile, familiar themes in Hebrew literature, bear rewriting when the prose radiates with beauty and sensitivity as those six stories do. The children in Invisible Mending are handicapped by tragedy or by the refugee experience of their parents. They may be lonely, degraded or helpless, but they are saved by the redemptive power of art.

YANI ON THE MOUNTAIN BY DAVID GROSSMAN

In "Yani on the Mountain, " David Grossman explores the psychological impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War on a young generation of Israelis living in a Mount Sinai army base in its final days before demolition.