Sometime during his restless fifteenth year, Bernie Karp discovered in his parents’ food freezer — a white-enameled Kelvinator humming in its corner of the basement rumpus room — an old man frozen in a block of ice…   One of the magical properties of fiction is its ability to inspire emotion. Sometimes it uplifts us, andContinue reading

This summer I’m revisiting Sinclair Lewis, whom despite being the first American writer awarded the Nobel, along with the first to refuse the Pulitzer, seems to have fallen out of vogue in recent decades, but appears to be making a comeback, along with Thomas Wolfe. For my money, Lewis is the quintessential Great American Novelist.Continue reading

When I was five, I developed a morbid fascination with the chicken fillets in my grandmother’s freezer. I was absolutely sure that they were the remains of her late, misanthropic cat Griffer. I was denied animal companionship for the first five years of my life because we lived in a no-pets apartment. Luckily, I wasContinue reading

“Extraordinary.”–The New York Times Book Review “Page after page, Stern embraces every outrageous possibility, in lush, cartwheeling sentences that layer deep mystery atop page-turning action atop Borscht Belt humor.”—Washington Post “A funny, profound and virtuosic work … What awaits is a rare enchantment.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Laugh-out-loud funny … A wonderfull entertaining, inventive new novel thatContinue reading

The New York Times Book Review has only good things to say about Algonquin reads! The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern The July 3rd issue of The New York Times Book Review gave a full page rave for The Frozen Rabbi: “Tradition is too modest a word for the extraordinary story behind the icebound rabbi’sContinue reading

This week from Algonquin: Steve Stern‘s newest novel, The Frozen Rabbi. Stern has been writing for over twenty-five years, earning high praise for his Yiddish-folklore-inspired novels, short-story collections, and children’s books. He’s won the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Writers’ Choice Award, and the National Jewish Book Award. We asked him a few questions andContinue reading