Dan Ben-Amos

Sep 17, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Dan Ben-Amos |Michael Solomonov |Steven Cook |A. R. Vishny

Okay, but what’s an estrie? It’s the single most common question I get, whenever I mention they’re the subject of my debut novel, Night Owls. The short answer is that they are Judaism’s vampires: women who appear as ordinary members of the community, but feed on the blood of unwitting men. They can shapeshift; and they can fly when their hair is let down; they are healed by bread and salt; the recommended way to kill one is to bury her.

Apr 8, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Dan Ben-Amos

Leigh Bardugo’s The Famil­iar trans­ports read­ers to Spain dur­ing its Gold­en Age. It’s a sweep­ing nov­el that opens with an omi­nous line: ​“If the bread hadn’t burned, this would be a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry.” And it is this per­va­sive sense of malaise, of threats seen and unseen that per­me­ates each page of the story. Luzia Cota­do is a maid in Casa Ordoño in Madrid.

Jan 24, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Dan Ben-Amos

In this first book of the Mir­ror Realm Cycle series, Ariel Kaplan invites read­ers into a com­plex, ful­ly real­ized uni­verse. Com­bin­ing his­to­ry and fan­ta­sy, the nov­el fol­lows Jew­ish char­ac­ters who are reject­ed and relent­less­ly pur­sued by the world of Chris­t­ian Spain. A young Jew­ish woman named Toba enters the realm of the Maziks, mag­i­cal crea­tures with pow­ers men­ac­ing enough to rival those of the Inqui­si­tion.