“The Singer Sisters” is fast-paced and submerges the reader into a musical family, a musical world.

The Rabbi Small series is effective at capturing Jewish life in the American postwar era, when the past and the present-day American reality were really coming to a head.

Tracy Chevalier’s new novel “The Glass Maker” shines a spotlight on cosmopolitan Venice and nearby quiet Murano, famous for its glass.

“Songs for the Brokenhearted,” Tsabari’s first novel, was worth the wait.

“Olive Days” is a brilliant exploration of the lasting power of Jewishness, of Jewishness that’s not dependent on belief.

A review of Jay Prosser’s new memoir, “Loving Strangers: A Camphorwood Chest, a Legacy, A Son Returns.”

The novel is narrated (mostly) by the collective voice of the Jewish community of Tetouan in northern Morocco), and it chronicles the short and frustrated life of a woman with the curious name of Mazaltob, or “good fortune.”

In college, and again later, in Sam and Sadie’s working lives, the saving power of friendship comes to the fore as the dominant theme of the novel.

Karen E. H. Skinazi reviews Sarah Bernstein’s novel “Study for Obedience.”