Spring is a time for renewal. Summer is a time for reading. Get ready by replenishing your bookshelf with any of these newer titles.
“As Close to Us as Breathing”
The latest effort from novelist and poet Elizabeth Poliner is a multigenerational epic that covers nearly a century but centers on one tragic summer (1948) in a predominantly Jewish shoreline retreat known as “Bagel Beach,” where three sisters and their families share a cottage.
“As Close to Us as Breathing” (368 pages, Lee Boudreaux Books) was an Amazon best book in March. As told by Molly, 12 at the time, a horrible accident shatters the idyll, and sets in motion a lifetime of grief and guilt for this tight-knit, religious family. Beyond exploring the inner lives of one vivacious and volatile clan, the novel warmly captures the pivotal, post-Holocaust period when American Jews found themselves so intensely wrenched between ancient custom and modern opportunity.
“Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power”
It’s no secret that Barbra Streisand is Jewish. Yet of the many biographies dedicated to her, this might be the first that so intensely examines her life and career through the prism of her Jewish identity.
Neil Gabler, an award-winning journalist, historian and film critic, argues in “Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power” (296 pages, Yale University Press) 
that the celebrated singer-actress-producer-director brilliantly played her Jewishness into a symbol for being an outsider.
At first dismissed and even detested for “acting too Jewish” and “looking too Jewish,” Streisand, Gabler writes, isn’t merely one of the world’s most talented and successful performers, but an “avenger for anyone who felt marginalized.”
“The Best Place on Earth”
Israeli-born Ayelet Tsabari’s debut collection of short fiction packs an emotional punch.
With settings that range from Israel to India to Canada, the 11 stories in “The Best Place on Earth” (272 pages, Random House) focus largely on the strivings of Israel’s Mizrachi Jews and their relationships with one another and the surrounding society.
The tales span from mothers and siblings to soldiers and bohemians. From moments of love to explosions of violence, the clash between tradition and modernity is the collection’s common cauldron.
“The Bridge Ladies”
“Facebook may connect us across the world and throughout history, but it won’t deliver a pot roast.” It’s with this bittersweet reflection on lost connection that Betsy Lerner, a poet and literary agent, introduces the five members of her mother’s 50-year-old weekly bridge game.
In her memoir “The Bridge Ladies” (320 pages, Harper Wave), Lerner finds common ground with these ladies she had known for decades but only at a distance, learning a little about bridge and a lot about life and loyalty — much of it funny, some of it heartrending. Bridge becomes the metaphor, as Lerner finds in the experience a way to cross the personal divide between mother and daughter.
“Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo”
When their 8-year-old adopted son, Max, turns “feral”— consorting with wild animals and eating grass — Maya and Alex Rubin venture west of New Jersey for the first time in their lives to track down Max’s birth parents in Montana.
Boris Fishman’s novel “Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo” (336 pages, Harper) intertwines the journey narrative with the story of how Maya, an ambitious Ukrainian exchange student, and Alex, the somewhat spoiled son of Russian immigrants, met 20 years earlier.
The result is a touching portrayal of a marriage and family, as well as a meditation on what it means to dream, to sacrifice and to fit in.
“Septimania”
For his first novel since 1992’s critically acclaimed “A Guide for the Perplexed,” Jonathan Levi has created an exhilarating epic that crisscrosses the borders of the world and of the imagination.
“Septimania” (336 pages, Overlook Press) is about an English organ tuner who discovers he is the heir to the Kingdom of Septimania, a historically real territory that was given by Charlemagne to the Jews of eighth-century France.
Over a fantastical half-century that stretches through the present into the future, this newly crowned “King of the Jews” will encounter Pope John Paul II, Haroun al Rashid of “Arabian Nights” fame, an elephant that changes color, one of the 9/11 bombers and even a seed from the original Tree of Knowledge (among other things).
“Who Stole My Spear?”
Tim Samuels, an award-winning British documentarian and broadcaster, offers a humorous but brutally honest look at modern masculinity in “Who Stole My Spear?” (368 pages, Random House UK). Writing about how to be a man in the 21st century, he reflects upon everything from relationships and fatherhood to corporate culture, porn and the rise of ISIS.
The author occasionally draws on his Jewish background, such as using his own bar mitzvah as the jumping-off point for a chapter on how all young men need some rite of passage. The book is at its best when piercing long-fortified stereotypes and calling for a new definition — that is, no definition — of what it means to be “normal” today.