Summer 2026 Book Club Picks
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The Emilys—Heather Abel
A mother becomes obsessed with finding the cure to a mysterious ailment that is spreading throughout her New England town in this kaleidoscopic novel about love’s capacities in a changing world.
The Dark Robed Mother—Rachel Tzvia Back
In this striking blend of memoir and poetry, Rachel Tzvia Back draws on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, using this ancient story of loss, return, and the aching bond between generations to illuminate her journey through decades of living, writing, and mothering with depression.
Last Woman of Warsaw—Judy Batalion
This debut novel by bestselling author of The Light of Days follows two very different Jewish women in Warsaw in the late 1930s as they unexpectedly come together in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home, and as they grapple with the storm clouds gathering around them.
The World Between—Zeeva Bukai
A former Yiddish actress, waking one day to find herself in a Jaffa sanatorium, revisits the arc of her extraordinary life—from a Holocaust-era childhood in a Siberian labor camp to a tempestuous marriage and decades on stage in Tel Aviv and New York.
Maya's Journey: A Story of Two Great Grandmothers—Marcella White Campbell
When young Maya sets out to tell a family story, she uncovers the courage, laughter, and dreams of her great-grandmothers—and discovers the powerful story she was always meant to tell.
Famesick: A Memoir—Lena Dunham
In her second memoir, Dunham asks what the true cost of fame has been across the decade that produced Girls, chronicling illness, addiction, creative burn-out, and estrangement as she searches for what, and who, she loves—and whether all of it was worth it.
Homebound—Portia Elan
This tender, inventive novel follows four women, connected across centuries, as they expand the possibilities of what home and family can be.
Porcupines—Fran Fabriczki
A fresh and witty debut about a young immigrant mother and her increasingly inquisitive daughter, who wakes up one day and decides to find out who her father is.
Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe—Matti Friedman
Drawing on thousands of original documents from once-secret files, this gripping history unravels the story of young Jewish men and women—including the legendary Hannah Senesh—who parachuted back into Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944 in a British military operation, examining what they actually accomplished and what truly made them heroes.
The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II—Daniella Gerson
Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, and part contemporary reporting, this memoir follows immigration journalist Daniela Gerson as she unearths the intertwined stories of her own family and her wife's—two families from the same Polish shtetl who survived the Holocaust by fleeing east into the Soviet Gulag—and reveals the echoes of that experience across still-contested lands from Ukraine to Israel.
When We See You Again—Rachel Goldberg-Polin
A searing memoir of a mother's grief and love following October 7, 2023, when her 23-year-old son Hersh was taken hostage from a music festival.
This is Not About Us—Allegra Goodman
When their beloved sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein fall into a decade-long feud sparked by a misunderstanding over apple cake, while the dramas of divorces, bat mitzvahs, career setbacks, and grandchildren swirl around them in this wry, multigenerational portrait of a Jewish American family.
West of the Ghetto—Lori Harrison-Kahan
Blending history, collective biography, and literary criticism, this scholarly work repositions the American West as a generative space for Jewish women's literature.
Three Pieces of Broken Glass—Emily Barth Isler, illustrated by Vesper Stamper
When the narrator of this beautiful picture book accidentally breaks one of Great Grandma Inge's fancy glasses, she learns the stories behind three precious shards on the windowsill—from a glass shattered at a wedding to haunting reminders of Kristallnacht—in this tale about finding beauty and strength even in broken times.
Delivering Knowledge: Jewish Midwives and Healing in Early Modern Europe—Jordan Katz
Delivering Knowledge centers the experiences of Jewish midwives to open new understandings of Jewish communal history, the history of women's healing practices, and Jewish-Christian relations in the early modern period.
Evening Begins the Day—Jessica Brilliant Keener
A novel weaving together two neighboring families in crisis—one reeling from a marital betrayal and the other grappling with their at-risk teenage daughter—with the ancient Jewish spiritual practice of the Counting of the Omer, in a modern-day quest for community, hope, and healing.
God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion—Samira Mehta
God Bless the Pill traces the remarkable story of how mid-20th-century Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish voices promoted birth control and made it more accessible for many Americans, but did so for reasons tied to family stability and Cold War political concerns rather than for inherently feminist reasons
The End of Romance—Lily Meyer
A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant love story about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance—only to find her theory tested in ways she never expected.
You've Told Me Before—Jennifer Anne Moses
Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, always compelling, the stories in this collection explore the many manifestations of being Jewish in a modern and largely secular world.
The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War, and Betrayal—Catherine Ostler
The true story of one of impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s most famous paintings, and an astonishing exploration of the rise and fall of a prominent French Jewish family from the Belle epoque to World War II.
For the Love of Labor—Cathryn J. Prince
Prince’s biography traces how Pauline Newman, a self-educated Jewish immigrant and one of the youngest activists in US history, helped shape the International Ladies' Garment Workers’ Union into a dominant force in industrial America.
When We're Born We Forget Everything—Alica Jo Rabins
From the creator of the internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter project "Girls in Trouble," a memoir following her journey from a secular Jewish childhood to becoming a modern queer woman owning ancient teachings and finding her own meanings in them, refracted through feminist interpretations of the lives of Biblical women.
A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski—Anita Wyzanski Robboy
This biography of Gisela Warburg Wyzanski, written by her daughter, tells the story of a remarkable German Jewish woman who courageously helped thousands of Jewish children escape the Holocaust.
Night Night Fawn—Jordy Rosenberg
In this novel, a ferocious account of intergenerational conflict, a yenta on her deathbed gives an unrepentant account of all her failures—including her child.
Still Talking—Lore Segal
A slim, posthumous collection of short stories following a close-knit group of elderly Jewish women in New York as they navigate the indignities, losses, and small joys of aging—still talking, still laughing.
Odessa—Gabrielle Sher
In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turns to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave.
Effingers—Gabriele Tergit, trans. by Sophie Duvernoy
An epic and intimate novel about three generations of a German Jewish family, following the Effingers from their modest craftsman origins in 1878 through their rise as Berlin industrialists, the upheavals of World War I and the Weimar Republic, and ultimately to 1948, in a keenly observed account of German Jewish life in all its richness and complexity.
Collected Works of Ruth Whitman—Ruth Whitman, Ed. by David Houghton
For the first time in a single volume, this collection brings together nine books of poetry by acclaimed 20th-century poet and Yiddish translator Ruth Whitman—including one previously unpublished volume—in which she imagines and interrogates womanhood, Jewishness, and memory, as well as her guidebook Becoming a Poet.
