In our last column, we looked at some new novels. We hope you’ve been reading and enjoying them, and, as promised, we’re going to suggest some more. We gathered recently to share our thoughts about several additional recent titles sure to please fiction lovers:

JUDY: “The House at Tyneford” by Natasha Solomons, will be your “cup of tea” if you like Downton Abbey on PBS. It’s old-fashioned storytelling, full of charming characters. The novel takes you back to the time of manor houses, aristocracy, and domestic servants in England. Natasha Solomon’s main character, Elise Landau, is a Viennese teenager from a family of artists, who is forced to flee her home and finds herself in service as a parlor maid in a fine English country estate. She soon discovers that passion can be found in the most unexpected places.

ANNE: Another romantic novel is “The Lost Wife” by Alyson Richman. The story begins in 2,000, when 85-yearold

Josef Kohn and 81-year-old Lenka Maizel rediscover each other after 61 years. They had fallen in love and were married before World War II, but were almost immediately separated when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia. Josef managed to get out and reach New York, while Lenka ended up at Terezin and eventually Auschwitz. Martin Fletcher, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, describes this as a “love story, wrapped in tragedy and survival.”

AMY: Speaking of Martin Fletcher, his novel, “The List,” is Philadelphia’s current “’One Book, One Jewish Community” selection. Set in post-WWII Hempsted, England, it is the story of Jewish refugees attempting to rebuild their shattered lives. Edith and Georg, and the other refugees, must contend with the British Fascist element who seek, through petitions and rallies, to have the Jews deported back to their prewar countries. The refugees, of course, know that there is no “going back,” even if they wanted to. But they do ache to learn the fate of their families and friends. Edith’s cousin Anna, a deeply damaged Auschwitz survivor, arrives and soon is involved with a mysterious Egyptian neighbor. Meanwhile, Georg keeps a list of all their family members’ names, crossing them off when a death is confirmed (hence the title).

JUDY: Coming soon (being published next week) is “Wild Thing” by Josh Bazell. This thriller picks up where his previous novel, “Beat the Reaper,” left off. It’s hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed, so Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, takes a job that gives him the problem of murderers, mobsters, and assorted other threats. Bazell’s books are darkly funny and move at a lightning pace. When I read “Beat the Reaper,” I was hooked at half a page, and finished it the same day, so I’m looking forward to more of the same.

ANNE: Popular Israeli author Amos Oz has a new book, “Scenes from Village Life,” which is a collection of linked short stories. Oz depicts fascinating characters in Tel Ilan, a century-old pioneer village where there is a sense of unease and despair despite its being a seemingly cozy town. It’s a parable for Israel and for all of us.

AMY: We’ve really covered a variety of genres! Despite its length (over 600 pages) I was totally engrossed, and very impressed, by “The Emperor of Lies” by Steve Sem-Sandberg. Originally published in Sweden, this is not light reading, but certainly worthwhile in every sense—as literature, as a story, as historical fiction. Set in the Lodz Ghetto, the novel depicts daily life, and focuses especially on “The Emperor,” Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (previously featured in another novel, Leslie Epstein’s 1979 “King of the Jews”). Rumkowski, the Ghetto leader, is a controversial figure— he was by turns generous, cruel, caring, and selfish. Sem- Sandberg makes this real-life character come vividly to life, and weaves actual historic documents into the book. Perhaps most heartbreaking is Rumkowski’s speech to the ghetto residents when he is charged by the Nazis with the task of gathering the children for deportation. Rumkowski believed that by making the Ghetto a highly productive manufacturing center, he could ensure that the Nazis would let the Jews live. History shows how wrong he was.

ANNE: Back to where we started, our last book is also a love story, “The Little Bride” by Anna Solomon. Sixteen-yearold Minna Losk, an 1880s mailorder bride from Odessa, was searching for a little shtetl on the prairie. She instead ends up in a South Dakota one-room sod hut in this story that was inspired by the real history of Jewish settlement of the Great Plains. Vivid characters and the frontier landscape will haunt you after you’ve turned the final page of this epic tale.

We could go on and on with great new novels, so come to our libraries and see for yourself!

Visit Anne Bressman at Temple Emanuel and the JCC libraries (abressman@- jfedsnj.org); Judy Brookover at Temple Beth Sholom (judy.brookover@gmail.com); Amy Kaplan at Cong. Beth El (akaplan@bethelsnj.org).