Queen Esther
By John Irving (Simon & Schuster)

In his 16th novel in almost 60 years, the multi-award-winning author John Irving returns to the Maine orphanage where his best-selling novel of 40 years ago, The Cider House Rules, took place. Irving’s characters are complex and memorable, and Esther, his latest protagonist, is no different. A Jewish immigrant from Vienna, she is orphaned soon after her arrival in the United States. From Maine, the setting of this absorbing work of historical fiction shifts to Vienna, then Mandatory Palestine and ultimately 1980s Jerusalem. (See our Q&A with the famed author here.)

When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy
By David Margolick (Schocken)

In the 1950s, Sid Caesar’s hilarious weekly television program Your Show of Shows attracted 20 million viewers. Born in Yonkers, N.Y., Caesar had a stable of New York Jewish writers, including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon. And still, more than 70 years later, Caesar’s fast-paced, original comic style inspires and influences a new generation. New York Times and Vanity Fair writer David Margolick’s lively biography probes Caesar’s personality, wit and the ups and downs of his career.

The Shabbat Effect: Jewish Wisdom for Growth and Transformation
By Alan Morinis (Bloomsbury Academic)

This is a profound and practical guide to making the Sabbath a time to cultivate qualities such as awareness, peace, joy and harmony. As Alan Morinis explains, the drive to become a better human being—“more whole and more holy”—is meant to permeate not just Shabbat but the rest of the week as well. His teachings are based on the more than 1,000-year-old Jewish tradition of mussar, enhanced with modern sources. A leading voice in the contemporary revival of the mussar movement, Morinis is the founder of The Mussar Institute.

Yiddish: A Global Culture: Bold Lives, Boundless Creativity
Edited by David Mazower (White Goat Press)

A companion to the permanent exhibition at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., this illustrated book chronicles the broad sweep and flowering of Yiddish culture—literature, theater, music, art and journalism—including women’s voices. The strong graphics and photographs are accompanied by behind-the-scenes stories of Yiddish culture from the 19th century to today. Book editor David Mazower, great-grandson of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch and the center’s research bibliographer, also curated the exhibit. 

Tell Me I Belong: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations
By David Weill (Union Square)

A spiritual coming-of-age story with some unusual twists, David Weill’s memoir details his search for identity. Now an author and renowned doctor specializing in advanced lung disease and organ transplants, Weill grew up in New Orleans in a home where religion was an unspoken subject. He felt like he “never quite belonged,” he writes, in either the Christian or Jewish communities. His agnostic Jewish father, a famed pulmonologist, left Germany as a child, and his mother was born a Southern Baptist. A crisis in his career and personal life led Weill to search for his roots.

Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently of 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.