Delphinium Books

A complex family drama with a Manhattan family court judge at its center.

 I Don’t Know How to Tell You This focuses on Judge Rachel Sugarman and her life both inside and outside the courtroom. Rachel is part of a close Jewish family whose lives are marked by significant emotional challenges, including the painful recognition that her beloved husband is slowly being diminished by memory loss, and the past trauma of her mother-in-law, a prickly Holocaust survivor who, in old age, continues to struggle with her grief. 

Rachel’s career as a judge and the power she wields in her courtroom offer an intimate look at a woman navigating what is still, in the 21st century, a profession most often dominated by men. The novel explores the very topical issues of child and spousal abuse, which color the dark undercurrent of the courtroom scenes. And though it reflects serious issues, there is very clearly a pitch-black comic sensibility at work throughout the novel.  By turns sad and touching and quirkily humorous, I Don’t Know How To Tell You This is vintage Marian Thurm.  

Inspired by the true story of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and his studies at the University of Michigan, The Professor of Immortality is a gripping, heartfelt look at the way we might or might not choose to respond to recent advances in science and technology, that, despite their positive impact, also threaten to destroy our environment, our privacy, our ability to connect with nature, and our sense of life’s authentic meaning and purpose.

Newman’s trio of novellas about desert misfits are by turns probing, incandescent, and like her shorter fiction, riotously funny and are certain to broaden her readership.

Brooklyn’s Hasidic community of Lubavitchers is turned upside down when family tragedy strikes and everyday life changes forever in the life of Zev Altshul.

He is first placed into the care of the closed and close-knit community where he grew up, but soon realizes he can’t stay. His saving grace is handball; it’s his gift from God, and the one thing he can rely on as he is shuttled, chased, and abandoned by trusted elders, family, and friends. Even as Zev never fully escapes from the guilt of his choices, he sets course across the United States to discover where loyalty really lies and what it means.

He seeks out his long-lost sister, only to find himself as unprepared for life outside the Lubavitcher community as he was unwilling to remain. Forced out of his second home, Zev plays handball to support himself in the goyische world, but obligations he doesn’t fully understand still tie him to Crown Heights and follow him to Chicago and New Mexico threatening always to return Zev to life among the Lubavitchers.

Lyrical, vivid, and thoroughly engaging, this is certainly among the first novels of its kind.

Set in the vanished world of the New York City of the 1970s and ‘80s, these stories convey a sense of the enchantment that lurks on the flip side of every moment, as if the meaning of life were hidden within the static being blasted out of the loudspeakers on a subway platform, or a scrap of newspaper preserved under ice on a cold winter’s day.

A girl tries to save the boy she loves from his crippling love for his uncle.  A champion of social justice talks herself into believing that the man she finds sexually repulsive is a perfect fit for her perfectly ordered life. A man kneels on the sidewalk before a memorial he constructed for his girlfriend as a crowd of curious onlookers gather around him. Rosaler deals out the fates of a vivid array of complex characters with unflagging energy, wit and a delight in the details of city life.  

When a Hollywood producer comes to Oriana at the end of her life to propose a movie, the story unfolds of her gutsy career rise as a journalist, her tragic love, and her greatest regret.

When a Hollywood producer visits Oriana Fallaci at the end of her life to propose a movie, the story unfolds of her trailblazing career as a journalist, her tragic love, and her greatest regret.

Oriana was born in Italy, moved to Manhattan, and shot to international fame for her provocative interviews of world leaders and celebrities. At her peak in 1973, Oriana was called “the best reporter in the world.” That’s when she fell in love with Alexander Panagoulis, Greek hero and poet. He was ten years younger and lived in a different country, but Oriana didn’t care. She had finally found what she longed for: a full life. Can a woman ever have it all, or does life always exact a price?

Christiane Amanpour calls Oriana her role model, saying, “I wanted to be her!”

Oriana holds a place alongside Mike Wallace and Barbara Walters as a legendary interviewer. But her story is little-known in America, until now.

The first biographical novel of the glamorous Italian, the iconic journalist, the woman in love. 

The Monsoon War revisits the futuristic country of Before She Sleeps, where government leaders maintain a stranglehold over women's freedom and reproductive lives. 

In a neglected southern province, a female armed resistance bands together as the Hamiyat, the protectors of those who are too weak to withstand. Now, they plan a courageous attack on the perpetrators of this regime that will free them from its tyranny forever.

Alia Musa is the wife of three husbands in a remote mountain village of Dhofar. When her youngest child, Noor, discovers a group of women who have escaped the regime to take refuge on the mountain, Alia must leave her home, join the Hamiyat resistance, and find out just how far she is willing to go for the daughters she loves, the husband she adores, and the mountain that she calls home.

As a promising young soldier in the Hamiyat, Katy Azadeh has found family and home in the resistance. Kidnapped during an unexpected skirmish and taken from the mountains, Katy is seduced by the ways of wealthy neighboring Eastern Semitia. Despite their veiled promises, Katy must find her way back to the Hamiyat to face the war that threatens their very existence.

Commander Fatima Kara is a veteran of the Hamiyat, leading her women to protect the women of the mountain villages from the government agents and the abuses of polygamy. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from Eastern Semitia makes Fatima Kara gamble with the lives of her soldiers, to win the ultimate prize for them all—their freedom.

The Monsoon War is a near-future resistance novel that harnesses the powerful metaphor of women’s bodies as the battleground on which the wars of the future will be played out.

In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi’s world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar’s husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister’s death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US. As Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family’s Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American “melting pot” culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar's determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect.

This powerful debut novel explores Tamar's struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, and grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine.

This dystopian novel from one of Pakistan’s most talented writers is a modern-day parable, The Handmaid’s Tale about women’s lives in repressive Muslim countries everywhere. It takes the patriarchal practices of female seclusion and veiling, gender selection, and control over women’s bodies, amplifies and distorts them in a truly terrifying way to imagine a world of post-religious authoritarianism.

In his final college semester, Ben awakens to read on his computer screen about the death of his classmate and childhood friend Avi. Avi’s death is sudden and senseless, killed by a drunk driver on his way back to his dorm. Here begins Ben’s story of coming to terms with loss and finding his way to adulthood. 

In the fall of 2010, with his new degree in Moral Philosophy, Ben boards a plane to Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Though Ben has never held a gun, before the next summer ends, he is a trained sharpshooter. His service takes him from the Negev Desert to the Occupied Territories and Gazan border, all while finding "home" at a southern kibbutz where he is adopted as a brother and son. From Providence, Rhode Island to California and at last to Israel where Ben joins Mahal, the special set of non-Israeli-born Jews who volunteer in the IDF, he finds family where never expected, a place of his own in the Israeli mosaic. In a memoir that is both a coming-of-age story and epic ballad, Bastomski’s lyrically told story is intensely personal and ultimately universal.

As a middle child in a large military family, Christine just wants to dance. Her parents support her dreams, even if they seem beyond their comprehension. At 20, determined and talented, Christine heads across the country from Santa Fe to New York City and, in a made for-Hollywood story, is chosen for the London cast of A Chorus Line. While unwilling to fully cut ties with the traditional life her parents envision for her, she finds a new family with the dancers and more fluid, open characters that fill the theater world in London, and later New York, in the ‘70s & ‘80s. Christine learns that one member of her family is equally at home in her new world: Laughlin, her older brother—divorced, a father, ex-military and a corporate lawyer—also makes his way to New York City, where he meets, and begins to build a life, with rising fashion star Perry Ellis. The two men enjoy a partnership and a financial success that Christine both admires. and envies. She spends much of her free time in their Upper West Side brownstone and Water Island retreat. Soon everyone is talking about a mysterious new disease. As deaths of dancers, theater folk, and eventually friends start to mount, Christine realizes she’s in the middle of an epidemic that neither her traditional family nor the public at large is ready to reckon with. As the AIDS crisis cuts closer and closer, eventually impacting those she loves most, Christine does what she has always done: she strikes her own path. This memoir is an emotional, honest examination of what it takes to succeed in the competitive world of New York theater, how hard-won dreams can be quickly lost, what it means to redefine family, and the devasting toll AIDS exacted on a generation of artists.