Paranormal

Stacy Goldman is a garden-variety Jewish girl from New York. Except she's a chess champion. And she doesn't believe in anything she can't prove. Especially monsters.

When Stacy moves from NYC to Richmond, Virginia in the wake of 9/11, she enrolls in the academically aggressive St. Ignatius Prep in order to graduate early and get home to New York. At St. Ig's, she falls in with two other outsiders, Finder, the only Black girl and owner of the highest GPA in school and her white boyfriend, Tully, a vegetarian fencer and rugby star with a secret even Finder doesn’t know.

After Stacy interrupts a strange attack outside a diner, Finder & Tully reveal Richmond’s biggest secret - the city is home to a supernatural subculture run by a monster as old as the city itself. Ruled by logic and strategy, but having seen something she can’t explain, Stacy struggles with what is real and what is not, including her own faith.

When an alleged supernatural creature comes to Stacy needing help to defend himself and his children from the city's cruel and manipulative vampire leader, she employs her undeniable chess prowess and must discover her own untapped belief in the unimaginable to save not only his life but those of herself and her friends.

This collection of books featuring Jewish main characters is decidedly non-comprehensive. As we come across books that are described as having Jewish main characters, we add them to this database. The creators of the Jewish Genre Reading Challenge have not read all (or even most) of the books in this database. We have gathered information from many sources and not all may be accurate. Inclusion of a book in our database does not imply endorsement or approval. There is always the possibility that antisemitism may be present in a book, either written into a character's experience or through malicious or ignorant caricature or stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters and culture. Please take care of yourselves as you read. 

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