The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss
By Margalit Fox (Random House)

Journalist Margalit Fox brings to vivid life a storied figure largely unknown today: A Jewish woman who was one of the most infamous underworld criminal leaders in 19th century New York City. From her roots as a peddler on the Lower East Side, Fredericka Mandelbaum became a philanthropist, businesswoman and fixture of Gilded Age society while plotting and executing lucrative thefts and reselling stolen goods. Her death in 1894 made headlines around the world.

 

Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences
By Gila Pfeffer (The Experiment)

Comedy writer Gila Pfeffer has penned a cancer memoir full of humor and resilience. She’s a survivor of a disease that had killed both her parents by the time she was 30. In this life-affirming debut, Pfeffer, an activist for prioritizing breast health, writes about helping to raise her younger siblings and being young and single in the Orthodox community; she also describes her subsequent happy marriage, motherhood and faith.

 

Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America 
By Hasia R. Diner (St. Martin’s Press)

With relations between Israel and Ireland currently strained, Hasia R. Diner’s deeply researched book reminds us of the solidarity between Irish and Jewish immigrants to America. The Irish paved the way, arriving in the 1840s, with Jews from Eastern Europe beginning to land here in the 1880s. Diner writes about overlapping neighborhoods and connections through education, labor unions and politics. While she doesn’t avoid unpleasant moments in the immigrants’ intertwined history, she emphasizes how the two groups stood up for each other as they were both considered “other” by the wealthy Protestant elite.

 

The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom
By Adina Allen (Ayin Press)

A spiritual leader and innovative educator, Rabbi Adina Allen encourages creativity as a path to deeper spirituality, healing, self-understanding and compassion. For her, creativity is the heart of human nature. The co-founder of the Jewish Studio Project, whose goal is to cultivate creativity as a Jewish practice, Allen urges readers to use simple materials “to make art about it,” whether through movement, writing, painting or sculpture, to reinterpret Jewish texts and beliefs. The creative approach explained in this debut work is not exclusive to artists.

 

Life After Kafka
By Magdaléna Platzová. Translated by Alex Zucker (Bellevue Literary Press)   

Blending fact and fiction, Magdaléna Platzová imagines the life of Felice Bauer, who had been Franz Kafka’s first fiancée. (The author was engaged four times.) This is Felice’s story, set decades after they ended their relationship and based in part on her correspondence with Kafka, published as Letters to Felice. The novel begins as Felice and her family flee Europe in 1935, “where the ground had been disappearing underneath the Jews’ feet,” Platzová writes. The author places herself as a character in this literary tale, which moves back and forward in time, unfolding complexities surrounding the letters.

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Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently of 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.