By Rabbi Rachel Esserman 

“Eight Very Bad Nights”

The Oxford Languages dictionary defines noir as “a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.” Readers might wonder what noir could possibly have to do with Hanukkah, which is a festival of light and joy. According to Tod Goldberg, the editor of “Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir” (Soho Crime), having to spend eight nights with relatives is enough to drive almost anyone to murder. But don’t be fooled by his funny introduction: these stories are dark, offering plenty of surprise and questionable morality. While only a few directly deal with Hanukkah, all take place during the holiday, even if it is only mentioned in passing. 

My favorite story was “Not a Dinner Party Person” by Stefania Leder, which was a surprise because I’m not usually fond of stories about sociopaths. But Rachel, who narrates the tale, is not only very clear about her thoughts and actions, but carefully explains why society needs sociopaths: they can make dispassionate choices when empaths or normals react too emotionally to make the correct decision. What does create problems for her is a Hanukkah dinner with her awful mother and her sister’s even worse husband. She cares about her sister and niece as much as she can about anyone, but Rachel’s life is complicated with work problems, too, so the addition of these unpleasant people threatens to push her over the edge.

Ray Boyd, the main character in Lee Goldberg’s “If I Were a Rich Man,” might also qualify as a sociopath. After all, he’s only visiting his former prison roommate Phil Zarkin because he hopes to discover where Phil hid diamonds after a heist years before. It’s not Ray’s fault that he’s not stupid enough to fall for other people’s scams, nor is he willing to let anyone take advantage of him. His main worry is whether Phil, who now lives in a nursing home, is truly senile, or just pretending to have dementia in order to protect his stash. The way that the different plot elements come together was extremely satisfying.

Not all the characters lack concern for their fellow citizens. Take Jack Katz who worries that he won’t be able to make payroll, which would leave his employees without jobs during the holiday season. However, in “Eight Very Bad Nights” by Tod Goldberg, Jack doesn’t make the best decisions about how to solve his problems. In fact, he creates additional difficulties not only for himself, but anyone who tries to help him. The ending of the story came as a very pleasant surprise, taking a direction readers might not expect.

In J. R. Angelella’s “Mi Shebeirach,” Molly Blaze only wants to help her husband, who suffers from a great deal of pain after an accident. She’ll do whatever it takes to get the pain pills he needs to survive, even if it means acting in ways that go against her basic nature, such as stealing a briefcase from Gershom Fox, an Orthodox Jew, who treats her with kindness, even as she tries to rob him. The solution to her dilemma is surprising and wonderful. 
Others stories also offer surprises and moving endings, particularly “Johnny Christmas” by Ivy Pochoda and “Twenty Centuries” by James D. F. Hannah. Even the less successful stories have delights to offer. Anyone who enjoys reading noir will want to get their hands on a copy of “Eight Very Bad Nights.” 

“Love You a Latke”

I knew what to expect. After all, I read and enjoyed Amanda Elliot’s first two novels, “Sadie on a Plate” and “Best Served Hot.”* Her work includes romance, comedy and great descriptions of food and drinks. But to my surprise, “Love You a Latke” (Berkley Romance) did something else: it got under my skin in a way her previous books had not. Perhaps that’s because Abby Cohen, the work’s narrator, is cranky and cynical. Her mood is not helped by having to serve the incredibly irritating (and good looking) Seth Abrams, who stops by her café for coffee every morning. His cheery and find-the-good-in-everything manner is too much. However, Abby’s mood is also not helped by the worry that if her café doesn’t get more business, it may have to close. Plus, somehow she gets roped into organizing a Hanukkah festival for the small town in Vermont in which she lives. But the people she works with don’t seem to understand that Hanukkah is not Christmas and adding yarmulkes to plastic figures from a Nativity scene will not make a festival Jewish. 

Abby decides there has to be someone else in Vermont who is Jewish and can help her. It won’t surprise readers that that someone lives in her town: the very annoying Seth. The two make a deal: he will use his Jewish connections to get her the vendors she needs if she will pretend to be his girlfriend during a visit to his parents in New York City for the eight nights of Hanukkah. Abby is so desperate that she agrees. Of course, misunderstandings and miscommunications ensue, and the flame of true love is lit. (This is, after all, a rom-com.) 

In addition to all the rom-com fun, the novel deals with a serious underlying issue: Abby’s parents’ behavior while she was growing up leaves her unable to trust others. She has basically closed herself off to friendship and love. This is not helped by the romance she did have, which is what brought her to Vermont in the first place. Its ending was not pleasant. Even worse, Abby felt that in order to protect herself, she not only had to break off contact with her parents, but with the Jewish community. Her longing for Jewish connections becomes clear when she and Seth visit with his parents and it’s wonderful to see. 

“Love You a Latke” is a perfect book for the holiday season, but don’t worry if you don’t get to read it during Hanukkah. This outstanding rom-com can be enjoyed any season. 

*(To read The Reporter’s reviews of these books, visit Off the Shelf: Romance, fantasy or a combination of the two: Part two and Off the Shelf: Various genres, including...) 

“The Festival of Lights”

Is it possible for adults and young children to enjoy short stories written for middle-grade readers? It is if that book is “The Festival of Lights: 16 Hanukkah Stories” edited by Henry Herz (Albert Whitman and Company). Adults may pretend to be reading these works only so their younger children can enjoy them, but will find themselves as moved by the stories as the rest of their family. The tales range from sweet fun to the extremely moving.

Fans of stories with supernatural elements will enjoy R. M. Romero’s “Ewa and the Five Sites,” which includes a house spirit with a message from Ewa’s late grandmother, and Gini Koch’s “The Luck of the Irish” with its six-inch tall leprechaun. Both stories feature non-Jewish characters who learn something about their true heritage. Since this is a collection of Jewish stories, that secret is not a great surprise, but the execution of both is extremely well done.

Several stories deal with a December dilemma: whether to sing Christmas carols. “Dancing on Hanukkah” by Nancy Holder tells what occurs when a Jewish Girl Scout visits a nursing home to sing those carols and learns an important lesson after talking to a Jewish resident. Whether or not to forgo singing a religious solo for her school chorus is a problem faced in “The Most Jewish Christmas Song Ever” by Erica S. Perl, whose main character learns to be true to herself. 

Gift giving is featured in the humorous “The Gift of Gift-Giving” by Alan Katz, which offers a multi-generational look at gift giving, and the sad and serious “The Greatest Gift” by Joanne Levy, whose main character is spending her first Hanukkah with her uncle after her parents died in a car accident. 

It’s impossible to talk about all the stories in “The Festival of Lights,” but the range of plots and differences in mood makes this an excellent collection. Readers will have favorites they may find themselves revisiting every holiday season.

“Eight Nights to Win Her Heart”

Dear Hallmark Channel: Instead of wasting time trying to find a decent script for a Hanukkah-themed movie, just buy the rights to Miri White’s “Eight Nights to Win Her Heart” (Alcove Press). It contains two interesting main characters: Leo Dentz, who works for his father’s antique store, and Andie Williams, a preschool teacher who recently lost her remaining parent, and who will lose her job in the spring when her school closes. These two charming characters are neighbors who have been attracted to each other for ages, but both have been afraid to make a move. When Andie’s bag of groceries breaks on the first night of Hanukkah, Leo is so thrilled to discover that she is also Jewish that he invites her to share the lighting of the first candle and his take-out dinner.

Of course, if things went smoothly, this would not be a Hallmark drama. Their lives are complicated by several things. 1) Andie and Leo believe their romance will be limited to Hanukkah because Andie has a job offer out of state. 2) Leo’s father wants to sell the family business, but because of something that happened when Leo and his brother, Dean, were teenagers, he refuses to sell it to them. 3) Andie is looking for family, but not the drama she finds with the Dentz family. Adding to the fun is an adorable niece (Millie, the daughter of Leo’s older sister, Jodie), a synagogue holiday party, a blackout and a few details that can’t be revealed without ruining the plot. Plus, Leo has a hearing impairment and the author’s portrayal of life with a hearing loss is well done. “Eight Nights to Win Her Heart” would make a great Hallmark movie. 

“The Day I Became a Potato Pancake”

How could I resist a graphic novel about a boy who turns into a latke? In “The Day I Became a Potato Pancake” by Arie Kaplan with illustrations by Beilin Xu (Apples and Honey Press), best friends Ben and Naomi should know better than to sneak into Naomi’s mother’s secret lab. After all, her mother has forbidden them to enter many times. But that just makes the lab more intriguing. Unfortunately, although Ben should also know better than to touch anything, he can’t resist pushing one of the buttons, one that turns him into a potato pancake. 

At first, Ben is upset, but, as he lets people know what happened, he begins to enjoy the notoriety. After all, a walking, talking latke is a great novelty. But there is a problem: if Naomi’s mom can’t discover an antidote before the week is over, Ben will have to spend the rest of his life as a human fried potato. To complicate matters, someone else – someone out of this world – is interested in Ben.

OK, so “The Day I Became a Potato Pancake” is silly, but it is also great fun. The drawings add to its appeal: Xu does a wonderful and convincing job of making Ben look like a latke with a human personality. In fact, he looks so appealing, readers will understand Ben’s temptation to remain a potato. The novel is perfect for middle graders and anyone with a great sense of whimsy. 

“A Dragon for Hanukkah”

Speaking of readers with a great sense of whimsy: They will love the picture book “A Dragon for Hanukkah” by Sarah Mynowski and illustrated by Ariel Landy (Orchard Books). Older readers may wonder if Hannah really receives a dragon, a rainbow, a merry-go-round, unicorns and more for the holiday, but the author successfully shows how Hannah’s imagination creates a holiday filled with wonder. The drawings are bright and well done. The drawings of the dragon and unicorns are such fun that readers (young and old) may wish they’d received those presents themselves. The book concludes with a conversation Hannah holds with her dragon where she explains the meaning and symbols of Hanukkah.

“Eight Sweet Nights”

It’s a rare book that offers a combination of Ashkenazic and Sephardic holiday customs, but that is true of “Eight Sweet Nights, a Festival of Lights: A Hanukkah Story” by Charlotte Offsay with illustrations by Menahem Halberstadt (Doubleday Books for Young Readers). It’s the first night of Hanukkah and a mixed racial family brings goodies and gifts for an extended family celebration. The pan used to fry foods once belonged to a great-grandmother known as bubbe and is now used by grandparents known as savta and saba. The family makes traditional foods – latkes and sufganiyot (jelly filled doughnuts) – in addition to a more contemporary treat: edible dreidels made from marshmallows, chocolate kisses and pretzel sticks. The drawings create a holiday mood since they make it clear this family is having a wonderful time. There are also explanations on many pages about the words and customs mentioned with which readers may not be familiar.