The American Jewish Chronicle

'A wise, intimate tale that is by turns joyful, sorrowful and explicit' Observer 'The author delves deep into Lottie's psyche, shying away from nothing, to create a rounded and gripping portrait of a woman on the edge of change' Daily Mail Lottie Kristin is independent from the start. Born in the middle of the century to a middle-class family in the very middle of America, Lottie is set apart by her smarts and sensuality. A girl who'd rather carry out dissections on a snowy back porch than join her family for Christmas dinner is a strange and exotic artifact in the town of Sleeping Bay. But by her early twenties, Lottie finds herself trapped in a marriage gone stale, with a daughter she adores but whose existence jeopardizes her place in the lab and her dream of becoming a scientist. How can a young woman make her way in a world determined to contain her brilliance, her will, and her longing to live? Bravely and wisely written, Artifact is an intimate and propulsive portrait of a whole woman, a celebration of her refusal to be defined by others' imaginations, and a meditation on the glorious chaos of biological life.

'You see, if only they didn’t speak English in America, then we’d treat it as a foreign country – and probably understand it a lot better’ ‘the sanest man in America’ – Bill Bryson ‘Jon Sopel nails it’ – Emily Maitlis **With a brand new chapter, charting Trump's first year in power** As the BBC’s North America Editor, Jon Sopel has had a pretty busy time of it lately. In the time it’s taken for a reality star to go from laughing stock to leader of the free world, Jon has travelled the length and breadth of the United States, experiencing it from a perspective that most of us could only dream of: he has flown aboard Air Force One, interviewed President Obama and has even been described as ‘a beauty’ by none other than Donald Trump. Through music, film, literature, TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes that we wear we all have a highly developed sense of what America is and through our shared, tangled history we claim a special relationship. But America today feels about as alien a country as you could imagine. It is fearful, angry and impatient for change. In this fascinating, insightful portrait of American life and politics, Jon Sopel sets out to answer our questions about a country that once stood for the grandest of dreams, but which is now mired in a storm of political extremism, racial division and increasingly perverse beliefs.

A political thriller set against the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the Pulitzer-nominated, bestselling author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year “Blends elements of spy thriller and love story, magical realism, and an all-too-real history of one of the world’s most intractable problems: peace between Israel and its neighbors." —The Boston Globe In the Negev desert, a nameless prisoner languishes in a secret cell, his only companion the guard who has watched over him for a dozen years. Meanwhile, the prisoner’s arch nemesis—The General, Israel’s most controversial leader—lies dying in a hospital bed. From Israel and Gaza to Paris, Italy, and America, Englander provides a kaleidoscopic view of the prisoner’s unlikely journey to his cell. Dinner at the Center of the Earth is a tour de force—a powerful, wryly funny, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, and the man who improbably lands at the center of it all.