JCC MetroWest presents, Laura Zigman, "Small World" From bestselling author Laura Zigman comes a heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults and finally reckon with their childhood. A heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults hoping to forge the […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Elizabeth Graver, "Kantika" A dazzling, Sephardic, multigenerational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance, and family as home. Kantika—“song” in Ladino—follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Rachel Beanland, "The House Is On Fire" Told from the perspectives of four people whose actions changed the course of history, this masterful work of historical fiction takes readers back to 1811 Richmond, Virginia, where, on the night after Christmas, the city's only theater burned to the ground in the middle of […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Cathleen Schine, "Kunstlers in Paradise" For years, clever and glamorous Mamie Künstler, 93, has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California with her housekeeper and gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s twenty-something grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Buzzy Jackson, "To Die Beautiful" Based on the true story of Hannie Schaft, known to the Nazis as the Girl with Red Hair. It’s 1940 and Hannie Schaft is a shy nineteen-year-old law student living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The timid, studious university student who once dreamed of becoming a League of Nations lawyer […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Andrew Ridker, "Hope" Ridker’s slashing satire of upper-middle-class life turns on the foibles of a seemingly charmed Jewish family in Brookline, Mass. Scott Greenspan is a well-respected cardiac surgeon. His wife, Deb, is known for her good work on various school and synagogue activities. Their daughter, Maya, works at a prestigious New […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Jennifer Rosner, "Once We Were Home" Among the tragedies of WWII were the Jewish children separated from their families, given new names, and instructed to follow new religions. Rosner follows The Yellow Bird Sings (2020), with this complex tale about fear, survival, and what it means to be a family, as four children grapple […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Daisy Alpert Florin, "My Last Innocent Year" It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Lauren Grodstein, "We Must Not Think of Ourselves" In time for Yom Hashoah comes this heart-wrenching story of love and defiance set in the Warsaw Ghetto, based on the actual archives kept by those determined to have their stories survive World War II. Inspired by the testimony-gathering project with the code name […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Peter Blauner, "Picture in the Sand" Peter Blauner's epic Picture in the Sand is a sweeping intergenerational saga told through a grandfather's passionate letters to his grandson, passing on the story of his political rebellion in 1950s Egypt in order to save his grandson's life in a post-9/11 world. When Alex Hassan […]

JCC MetroWest presents, Armando Lucas Correa, "The Night Travelers" Separated by time but united by sacrifice, four women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the fall of the Berlin Wall as they embark on journeys of self-discovery and maternal love. Lilith, the child of a white mother and Black father, […]