2021-2022 Picks
Find your local library to check out any of our picks! Join our Book Club conversation on Goodreads and sign up to receive emails about author features throughout the year.
Vera Rubin: A Life
By Jacqueline Mitton, Simon MittonThe first biography of a pioneering scientist who made significant contributions to our understanding of dark matter and championed the advancement of women in science.
Whistle: A New Gotham Hero
By E. LockhartWhen Willow discovers she must choose between using her new-found superpowers to help her run-down neighborhood community or remain loyal to the man who saved her mother’s life, she struggles with how to be a good person in a complicated world.
Florence Adler Swims Forever
By Rachel BeanlandWhen tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal after tragedy.
Hope Valley
By Haviva Ner-DavidThe story of two women, one Jewish-Israeli and one Palestinian-Israeli, who come together to form the unlikeliest of friendships.
The Rabbi Who Prayed With Fire
By Rachel Sharona LewisTaking on the city's old boys' club is already proving difficult...but then Beth Abraham bursts into flames. Fingers get pointed, and everyone's biases rise to the surface.
Sarahland
By Sam CohenIn Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and providing new origin stories for its cast of Sarahs, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself.
They'll Never Catch Us
By Jessica GoodmanA thriller about two sisters vying for the top spot on their cross-country team—until a teammate’s disappearance throws their lives off course.
Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir
By Ariella ElovicA gorgeous graphic memoir that asks: how can the author learn not to see herself as a never-finished DIY project, but to accept and even love the physical attributes society taught her to hide?
Rebel Daughter
By Lori KaufmanRebel Daughter transports the reader to one of the most dramatic and momentous events in human history – the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century.
The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and the Jinni
By Helene WeckerIn this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading to World War I— the long-awaited sequel to the The Golem and the Jinni—Helene Wecker revisits Chava, a golem, and Ahmad, a jinni, as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world.
Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets
By Judy Bolton-FasmanJudy Bolton-Fasman’s fascinating saga, Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets, recounts the search for answers to the mysteries embedded in the lives of her Cuban-born mother, Matilde Alboukrek Bolton and her elusive, Yale-educated father, K. Harold Bolton.
Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes
By Gabrielle KornA provocative and intimate collection of personal and cultural essays featuring eye-opening explorations of hot button topics for modern women, including internet feminism, impossible beauty standards in social media, shifting ideals about sexuality, and much more.
Golem Girl: A Memoir
By Riva LehrerThe vividly told, gloriously illustrated memoir of an artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies.
Lilyville
By Tovah FeldshuhThis heartwarming and funny memoir from a beloved actress tells the story of a mother and daughter whose narrative reflects American cultural changes and the world's shifting expectations of women.
Black Widow
By Leslie Gray StreeterHe was Jewish and white; she was Christian and black, but that didn't give them a moment's hesitation. But then Leslie Gray Streeter suddenly lost her beloved husband. Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow redefines the stages of grief.
Praying with Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as Sacred Practice
By Vanessa ZoltanVanessa Zoltan blends memoir and personal growth as she grapples with the notions of family legacy and identity through the lens of her favorite novel.
Not Your All-American Girl
By Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn RosenbergA multicultural story full of heart and hilarity about what it means to be all-American.
Recipe for Disaster
By Aimee LucidoThis middle grade novel is a hybrid of prose, verse, and recipes about a 12-year-old girl whose best friend's Bat Mitzvah inspires her to plan one for herself.
From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family
By June Cummins with Alix DunietzThe first and only biography of Sydney Taylor (1904–1978), author of the award-winning All-of-a-Kind Family series of books, the first juvenile novels published by a mainstream publisher to feature Jewish children.
Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture
By Annelise HeinzDrawing on photographs, advertising, popular media, and dozens of oral histories, this rich and colorful account offers the first history of the wildly popular game of mahjong.
The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams
By Jonathan Ned KatzHistorian Jonathan Ned Katz uncovers the forgotten story of lesbian and political radical Eve Adams (aka Eva Kotchever, born Chawa Zloczewer in Poland in 1891) and her long-lost 1925 book Lesbian Love.
The Disordered Cosmos
By Chanda Prescod-WeinsteinDr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter.
American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
By Gabrielle GlaserThe truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their twin searches to find each other.
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
By Judy BatalionA spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters.
Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews
By Deatra Cohen and Adam SiegelThe definitive guide to medicinal plant knowledge of Ashkenazi herbal healers, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.
Spilt Milk: Memoirs
By Courtney ZoffnessCourtney Zoffness considers what we inherit from generations past―biologically, culturally, spiritually―and what we pass on to our children.
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
By Dara HornHorn challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.
The Papercutter (The Split, #1)
By Cindy RizzoA blend of fantasy, romance, and Jewish imagination that imagines a world where a deeply polarized and ungovernable United States of America has separated into two nations—the God Fearing States (GFS) and the United Progressive Regions (UPR).
AfterMath
By Emily Barth IslerAfter her brother's death from a congenital heart defect, twelve-year-old Lucy is not prepared to be the new kid at school, especially in a grade full of survivors of a shooting that happened four years ago.
The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters
By Julie KlamPart memoir and part confessional, this is the fascinating and funny true story of one writer's journey into her family's past, the truths she brings to light, and what she learns about herself along the way.
How to cite this page
Jewish Women's Archive. "2021-2022 Picks." (Viewed on August 15, 2022) <https://jwa.org/programs/bookclub/bookshelf>.