You may have missed former BWC member Alice Rothchild’s February visit to Boston for the East Coast roll-out of her new book, a young adult book this time, Finding Melody Sullivan. After writing important nonfiction books on Israel/Palestine issues, Alice has turned her talents to another audience. The new novel features two young women; it is a story about trauma and taking emotional risks and also about the external realities of war and occupation in Israel/Palestine. You can read more about what Alice is doing at her websites: alicerothchildbooks.com or alicerothchild.com. The BWC Library has a copy of Finding Melody Sullivan as well as her other books. Brookline Booksmith also carries her new book. 

Alice’s colleague, author Nora Lester Murad has also written a YA novel, Ida in the Middle in which Ida, a Palestinian-American girl, eats a magic olive that takes her to the life she might have had in her parents’ village near Jerusalem. The BWC Library has a copy of Ida in the Middle.

Another member of our community writes under their pen name, Sacha Lamb.  They have written a very well-reviewed book When the Angels Left the Old Country. One reviewer wrote, “Imagine Neil Gaiman meets Fiddler on the Roof. Or Sherlock Holmes meets Fivel Goes West …  [this is a] sweeping, engrossing tale that follows two mystical creatures, an angel and a demon, as they journey to America from their small shtetl in the early twentieth century.” You can check out a copy from the BWC Library.

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If you are wondering about the 300+ books in the BWC Library collection, you can now use our online catalog from home here.

The BWC library books are shelved in categories that reflect the work of our committees and our overall commitment to social justice and Jewish culture. BWC members can check out books. The library is coordinated by a small committee and runs on the honor system. 

Please: be sure to sign out books and magazines that you take, keep them for only a month, and check them back in. The check-out notebook is on the windowsill. 

Here are the current shelf categories: 

• Antisemitism
• BWC / Boston Workers Circle / Workmen’s Circle /Arbeter Ring History
• Cookbooks and Food
• Equity
• Featured and Recommended
• Graphic Novels  
• Holocaust
• Holocaust Resistance
  Identity
• Israel Palestine Middle East 
• Jewish History
• Jewish History, U.S. 
• Jewish History, MA and East Coast
• Jewish Secularism Ritual Spirituality Religion        
• Literature, Fiction
• Literature, Folklore  
• Literature, Humor 
• Yiddish Bilingual
• Yiddish in English
• Yiddish Literature
• Yiddish Study and Learning
• Yiddish Translations from Other Languages

It’s B’nai Mitzvah and graduation season!  A gift in honor of a B’nai Mitzvah or a graduate can be donated to the library; we will add an attractive bookplate that mentions both the person being honored and the donor. Please contact Marie Ariel and Linda Stern for ideas about contributions at library@circleboston.org