On A Darkling Plain collects twenty-seven works of short fiction by Abraham Rothberg that revolve around the theme of War as... More > an unshakeable background of life. This is the first publication of many of his pieces, among them "The Doctor's Son," "Cousins," and "November Days." Others are previously published in a wide variety of journals and magazines including the Antioch Review, South Dakota Review, Southwest Review and Saturday Evening Post. Enjoy the works in The Darkling Plain; they will "introduce you into the lies and truths of other people's minds and hearts, to your own country and time, or strange, foreign places and other eras, into the most public forums and the most private scenes of human intimacy." < Less

"What Time Is It Now?" is a retrospective selection of essays, sharply observed and often humorous, that span almost fifty... More > years of reflections of modern life and literature, politics and personality. There is an essay analyzing the operations of British Secret Intelligence in the novels of John LeCarré, explorations of the conflicts between "superman" Social Darwinism and Socialism as portrayed in the works of Jack London. It contains a series of personal forays into the nature of modern marriage, of trying to "cultivate one's own garden" in modern life, as well as how novelists have depicted the "flawed dream" of American politics. In addition, there are analyses of Gary Snyder's poetry and their sources, Solzhenitsyn's short stories and plays and their underlying morality, and the domestic turbulence of Arnold Wesker's English dramas. Several essays also describe and dissect anti-Semitism in European life and literature, its roots and reverberations, and in one instance, in the works of T.S. Eliot. < Less

A clandestine cell of Arab jihadis bomb multiple targets in New York City. Their intentions are to strike at various... More > 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…" < Less

Coming to Terms is a novel exploring the lives of half a dozen friends and colleagues of differing generations-Hippies and... More > 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. < Less

In the forest of life, each family is a single tree; in the forest of death, each family is blighted in its own particular... More > 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. < Less

WWII has just ended, and in the first postwar summer, a group of veterans come home bringing the war with them like a... More > 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. < Less

The Hebrew Book of Exodus, begins with the story of Moses and the burning bush, a story that becomes a metaphor for the... More > Jewish people burned by genocide, persecution, hatred, prejudice, but not consumed. These short novels tell of Jews in the post-Holocaust 20th century struggling to survive not only the Holocaust, but their efforts to keep that bush greening and revived even after German murderousness has set it burning. “How the Burning Bush Burns,” tells of Polish Jews who have lost everything, and how they try to survive transplanted in New York City and Israel. Next, “The Preservers,” tells how a rabbi who is obsessed with preserving whatever artifacts of Jewish life and religion he can find given how much has been destroyed. The last, "The Pinkas Wall," tells of an American Jewish foreign correspondent in post-WW II Czechoslovakia who reflects on the Nazi occupation, while experiencing the contemporary oppression of another anti-Semitic regime under Stalinism. < Less

THE WALLS AND THE GATES is a panoramic novel of modern life, from the Great Depression to the upheavals of the 1960s,... More > 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." < Less

This spellbinding tale of friendship and enmity, of loyalty and betrayal, of pride and humility, that unites and divides a... More > 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. < Less

The latest work from Abraham Rothberg is a compelling and shocking look at the trials of a serial murder convicted, in the... More > early 1990s, of killing eleven women in and around the Rochester, NY area. More than just a mere account of the court proceedings, this narrative explores into Arthur Shawcross’s childhood, his tour of duty in Vietnam and his past murders, eloquently outlining the scores of conflicting evidence and testimony. Although humorous at times, Mr. Rothberg’s frank examination of the trial and its subject is both fascinating and unsettling. The book brazenly questions the ethics and efficiency of our modern judicial system and the fallout from a trial as lengthy and infamous as Shawcross’s. The impressively in-depth research and poignancy of critique make this a captivating and illuminating read. < Less