A Guide for the Perplexed, a novel by Dara Horn (Norton) Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When an Egyptian library invites her to visit as a consultant, her jealous sister Judith persuades her to go. But in Egypt’s post-revolutionary chaos, Josie is abducted—leaving Judith free to take over Josie’s life at home, including her husband and daughter, while Josie’s talent for preserving memories becomes a surprising test of her empathy and her only means of escape...A century earlier, another traveler arrives in Egypt: Solomon Schechter, a Cambridge professor hunting for a medieval archive hidden in a Cairo synagogue. Both he and Josie are haunted by the work of the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, a doctor and rationalist who sought to reconcile faith and science, destiny and free will. But what Schechter finds, as he tracks down the remnants of a thousand-year-old community’s once-vibrant life, will reveal the power and perils of what Josie’s ingenious work brings into being: a world where nothing is ever forgotten....An engrossing adventure that intertwines stories from Genesis, medieval philosophy, and the digital frontier...." from DH website

The Sisters Weiss,a novel by Naomi Ragen (St. Martin's Press) "In 1950’s Brooklyn, sisters Rose and Pearl Weiss grow up in a loving but strict ultra-Orthodox family, never dreaming of defying  their parents or their community’s unbending and intrusive strictures. Then, a chance meeting with a young French immigrant turns Rose’s world upside down, its once bearable demands suddenly tightening like a noose around her neck. Defiantly, she begins to live a secret life that shocks her family when it is discovered. Out of guilt and an overwhelming desire to be reconciled with those she loves, she agrees to an arranged marriage. But the night before the wedding, she commits an act so unforgivable it will exile her forever from her innocent young sister, her family and all she has ever known."--NR website

Tinderbox, a novel by Lisa Gornick (FSG) "Myra is a Manhattan psychotherapist. A quick study and an excellent judge of character, she thinks she knows what she’s getting when she hires a nanny—it’s her job, after all, to analyze people. Her phobia-addled son has just moved back in with his wife and child, and the new nanny, Eva, seems like a perfect addition: she cleans like a demon and irons like a dream, and she forms an immediate bond with Myra’s grandson."-from Macmillan website

The Golem and the Jinni, a novel by Helene Wecker (Harper) "Wecker has blended Jewish and Arab mythologies to create a magical novel set in 1899 New York... As Chava and Ahmad unite against a terrible threat, denizens of their lower Manhattan neighborhood swirl about them intriguingly." –Library Journal