Fiction:

The Liar's Gospel by Naomi Alderman (Little Brown) From the book jacket: "This is the story of a Jewish man, Yehoshuah, who wandered Roman-occupied Judea giving sermons and healing the sick. Now, a year after his death, four people tell their stories. His mother alternates between grief and rage while trouble brews between her village and the occupying soldiers. Iehuda, who was once Yehoshuah’s friend, recalls how he came to lose his faith and find a place among the Romans. Caiaphas, the High Priest at the great Temple in Jerusalem, tries to hold the peace between Rome and Judea. Bar-avo, a rebel and a murderer, strives to bring the peace tumbling down."

King Solomon's Troubles by Zoe Senesh (iUniverse) "the author  depicts stories that alternate between the ancient times of King Solomon and modern Israeli life of four women. They have different religious identities as Jewish, Moslem and Christian women, yet they struggle with similar problems."--from PR Web

Nonfiction:

Daily Life in Biblical Timesby Liora Ravid (Gefen) From the introduction: "For almost four thousand years, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and his wives, and the other biblical characters have walked alongside us, their stories and deeds forming the backbone of Judeo-Christian culture. The ocean of time that separates us from these ancient heroes has not tarnished their images, nor has the tumult of the modern age obliterated them from our minds. They stand beside us today just as they stood beside our ancestors before us, and just as they will stand beside our children and the generations of the future.     Yet although the hand of time has not erased the biblical characters from our minds, it has obscured the customs of their days that reveal why they acted in certain ways and not others. As a result, their story stands alone, disconnected from where they lived and the way of life they followed in ancient times. We know the story of what they did, but most of us are unaware of the way of life that dictated their actions.    Daily Life in Biblical Times brings the well-known stories that have wandered afar back to their place of birth and to the ground from which they sprouted. This book carefully shakes the dust of time from a world that was, but that ended and is no longer. It reconnects the stories to the cultural reality, social norms, and legal systems that were in place during the eriod when the biblical characters lived, but that no longer exist in Western culture."