Abraham Rothberg is the author of thirteen
published novels, among them THE HEIRS OF CAIN, THE THOUSAND DOORS, and
THE OTHER MAN'S SHOES. He has also published two books of history, a
collection of short stories, two children's books, and a volume of
literary criticism. His short stories, essays, poems and articles have
appeared in many publications and been reprinted in a number of
anthologies and textbooks, including THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES,
where three of his stories appeared. He was twice winner of the John H.
McGinnis Award, once for fiction, a second time for nonfiction. The
Rochester Literary Prize for a body of written work was also conferred on
him.
A native New Yorker, Rothberg has traveled widely on three continents
and worked at a variety of jobs in industry, government, publishing,
journalism, and university teaching.
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Print: $17.93 Download: $5.58 Coming to Terms is a novel exploring the lives of half a dozen friends and colleagues of differing generations-Hippies and Boomers, Gen-Xers and Vietnam and World War II veterans- as they strive to find meaning and happiness in the tidal wave of change inundating the America of the late 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st. All are caught up in a struggle with themselves and each other in trying to move their lives forward and make sense of their respective pasts, their personal commitments as wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, lovers and loners, young and old, heterosexuals and homosexuals, soldiers and civilians. As they come to terms with their pasts, they define their presents and discover their futures, some willingly, but most reluctantly. In doing so, they fracture the circles of their families, friendships and allegiances, and discover the prices human beings must pay in contending with society's constraints on the individual's struggle for freedom and pursuit of happiness.
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Print: $13.91 Download: $2.79 A clandestine cell of Arab jihadis bomb multiple targets in New York City. Their intentions are to strike at various significant symbols of American life and thereby force the American President to show himself publicly to reassure New York's citizens. Once he comes to New York, they plan to assassinate him.
A small special committee from C.I.A., the F.B.I., U.S. Army Intelligence and the New York City Police, aided by an Arabic-speaking Israeli Mossad agent is appointed to hunt the jihadis down before they can do any further damage and to prevent them from killing the President.
A cliff-hanger novel of suspense, The Holy Warriors shows us the deadly chess game between these two forces, from both the jihadis’ side and the American side, as well as the seething violence and the savage personal dramas beneath the hunters and the hunted.
Time Magazine writes "Violence has become the idiom of the times, and Rothberg proves that he understands all the nuances…"
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Print: $13.91 Download: $4.35 THE TORII GATE, a novel set in present-day Japan, involves Japanese and Americans caught up in a right-wing conspiracy to overthrow the Japanese government. The conspirators believe that democratic rule runs counter to Japanese history and tradition, and is an alien import of American culture. They are set on overturning the government to restore Japan to its "essential Samurai traditions" and Emperor-worship, and at the same time to purge Japan of American influence.
The story takes the six major characters through the coup and its aftermath. Not only are they involved with one another politically, but personally, as colleagues, friends, and lovers. In portraying their lives and the events in which they are caught up, the novel depicts the dilemmas facing modern Japan, simultaneously evoking its ancient history and its history since Japan's defeat in World War II.
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Print: $13.91 Download: $3.99 This spellbinding tale of friendship and enmity, of loyalty and betrayal, of pride and humility, that unites and divides a group of remarkable individuals, who are involved in the Hungarian Revolution and its aftermath. Exiles and émigrés, ex-diplomats and Intelligence agents, former prizewinning writers, Party hacks – all these "former people" struggling to resume their former more exalted positions, or giving up the pride of place they once enjoyed. Rothberg gives penetrating insights into how international policies are arrived at, how revolutions are won and lost, how the people who make the policies and fight the revolutions fare, and who pays the prices for their failures. In doing so, The Former People also makes clearer the mystery of how the Soviet Empire would, in the not-too-distant future, fall apart.
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Print: $11.91 Download: $4.23 Not long after Geppetto made Pinocchio, he finds himself disappointed in the boy he looks on as his son. Pinocchio cheats, plays hooky from school, and lies to cover his selfishness and misdeeds. But his nose betrays him. Still, when Pinocchio runs away from home, Geppetto is broken-hearted.
One day he is driven to make another marionette that turns out to be a girl he names Gelsomina. She is everything Pinocchio is not, generous, warm-hearted, eager to go to school and learn. Yet to his amazement, he finds that, in contrast to Pinocchio, Gelsomina's nose grows not when she tells a lie but only when she tells the truth.
But Geppetto misses Pinocchio, so Gelsomina sets out to bring him home. How she does so is a magical and charming fairy tale of how goodness triumphs, in which Gelsomina saves Pinocchio’s life, changes Geppetto's life for the better, and learns how to deal with telling the truth and lying until at last she becomes a real live girl, a daughter to Geppetto and a sister to Pinocchio.
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Print: $12.91 Download: $4.11 WWII has just ended, and in the first postwar summer, a group of veterans come home bringing the war with them like a disease they have contracted and are intent on curing. A group of them arrive at a renowned Writers' Workshop in NYC in search of peace, purpose and meaning. In that workshop, under the tutelage of the strange and estranged Miss Whiteside, disappointed writer, and a veteran of her own wars, they try to come to terms with what they have done in the war, and what the war has done to them.
These are veterans who are trying to put their experiences and insights down on paper for publication for others to read and understand. It is this "Beast in View" they all pursue, and it is in portraying that pursuit that Rothberg gives us a series of unforgettable events and characters who come to learn that peace is war by other means.
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Print: $19.95 Download: $5.95 THE WALLS AND THE GATES is a panoramic novel of modern life, from the Great Depression to the upheavals of the 1960s, dealing with the lives and fates of a varied group of fascinating human beings: An Irish-American family of immigrants whose father works on the New York City docks; a family of Tsarist refugees from the Soviet Union whose father remains an activist anti-Communist political; still another family, of immigrant Italians, who fled their native country and have since prospered in the California wine country.
We see the interlocking fates of the two major characters, best friends, as the Irish American boy struggles to become a doctor, and the Russian American boy, a musical genius, struggles to become an internationally known concert pianist. We watch their conflicts with themselves, with one another, and with their lives and times, their successes and defeats, until, finally, they come to understand that "Tears may open the gates, but joy will bring down the very walls."
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Print: $19.95 Download: $5.95 THE WALLS AND THE GATES is a panoramic novel of modern life, from the Great Depression to the upheavals of the 1960s, dealing with the lives and fates of a varied group of fascinating human beings: An Irish-American family of immigrants whose father works on the New York City docks; a family of Tsarist refugees from the Soviet Union whose father remains an activist anti-Communist political; still another family, of immigrant Italians, who fled their native country and have since prospered in the California wine country.
We see the interlocking fates of the two major characters, best friends, as the Irish American boy struggles to become a doctor, and the Russian American boy, a musical genius, struggles to become an internationally known concert pianist. We watch their conflicts with themselves, with one another, and with their lives and times, their successes and defeats, until, finally, they come to understand that "Tears may open the gates, but joy will bring down the very walls."
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Print: $13.92 Download: $3.95 In the forest of life, each family is a single tree; in the forest of death, each family is blighted in its own particular way. NO TRAVELER RETURNS portrays what happens to the members of the Brim family who, having survived the Great Depression and WWII, are stunned by the sudden death of the head of their family.
Out of their heartbreak and mourning, unable to comfort or solace one another, the family ties are strained to the breaking point as each of them tries to hold on to differing loves for their husband and father as well as their love for one another.
During the year following the death, the grief stricken and confused family struggles to cope with their sorrows. How each of the Brims does so is told from their own viewpoints with power and poignancy.
NO TRAVELER RETURNS is a novel that affirms the family as the most intimate and important haven in life while at the same time recognizing its complexities and difficulties as the smallest community in the larger society.
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