Why is this night different from all other nights? Every year when families gather for the Passover holiday, the youngest child poses that question as part of the poetic Four Questions near the start of the Seder. The answers are no less than the story of a people bound in slavery, their suffering in a foreign land, and their ultimate liberation - the story of Passover. Here the Four Questions are presented in breathtakingly luminous paintings by Ori Sherman. Whimsical animals parade through a unique format that can be read straight through in English or turned upside down to focus on the delicate Hebrew calligraphy and ingenious split-frame pictures. Each side of the Seder table can see its own variation of the richly colored scenes as elephants eat matzoh, monkeys dip herbs into water, and lions recline in newfound freedom. Author Lynne Sharon Schwartz answers the questions with refreshing clarity, providing insight into the symbols and rituals of the holiday. Experience a glorious art book, a beautiful gift for the kids who find the afikomen, and a wonderful way to experience Passover and its unique celebration of freedom.

Eisenberg was one of the first American design houses, and the jewelry that bears its mark is among the finest costume pieces ever created. Yet there is surprisingly little written about the company, and almost nothing about the other products it marketed. In more than 400 photographs, this book chronicles Eisenberg's beginnings in clothing fashion and follows the trajectory of its revered jewelry line, as well as documenting its often overlooked fragrances and cosmetics. With stories of the people and companies that were integral to this label's success, this book shows that, in its golden years, the company's creations deserved the place they held in only the finest stores.

Two-Part Inventions begins when Suzanne, a concert pianist, dies suddenly of a stroke in the New York City apartment she shares with her producer husband Philip. Rather than mourn in peace, Philip becomes deeply paranoid: their life is based on a fraud and the acclaimed music the couple created is about to be exposed. Philip had built a career for his wife by altering her recordings, taking a portion of a song here and there, from recordings of other pianists. Syncing the alterations seamlessly, he created a piece of flawless music with Suzanne getting sole credit. In this urban, psychological novel, author Lynne Sharon Schwartz brilliantly guides the reader through a flawed marriage and calculated career. Beginning with Suzanne's death and moving backwards in time, Schwartz examines their life together, and her remarkable career, while contemplating the nature of truth, marriage and the pursuit of perfection.

Since Marco Polo's explorations and Montaigne's travels, a lively dialogue has persisted about travel's pros and cons  its excitement, novelties, perils, and misadventures. Lynne Sharon Schwartz joins this dialogue with a memoir that raises serious and amusing questions.Not Now, Voyager takes us on a voyage of self-discovery as the author traces how travel shaped her. She visits Miami Beach as an adolescent with an aunt and uncle and confronts the sensation of not belonging; she goes to Rome as a young woman and ponders the difference between ignorance and innocence; she ventures to Jamaica and witnesses acute political and social unrest; and she takes a family road trip to Montreal and watches her daughters come to their own startling realizations.In this memoir, Schwartz's history takes on new shapes, and her feelings about travel change as she does. Her story exemplifies a mode of travel: the mind on a journey, pausing, sometimes by design, sometimes by serendipity, lingering, backtracking, but always on the move.

The purpose of this study will hopefully strengthen your faith by trusting God enough through prayer and His word to follow through in the direction He leads you. It is never a risk to follow God when you clearly hear from Him. His way is always the best way. If you allow Him to lead you, He will. Once you allow yourself to trust Him that much, your life will have peace and freedom like never before. His ways are not our ways, and often they are not as the world does. But the way of truth and His Truth will set us free. Sharon Schwartz grew up an active participant in her church. Starting with church choir, she eventually performed as a guest soloist in numerous churches. She is a choir and praise team member in her church yet today. She taught Sunday School, started women's small group neighborhood studies, coordinated mentoring programs, and began speaking at women's conferences. Having served for more than eight years as a BSF leader, she felt the calling to minister more directly to women's issues. Sharon has been involved with women's crisis center counseling and pregnancy counseling. She writes weekly women's devotionals for encouraging.com, the women's ministry website of her church. In addition to leading weekend retreats, she is presently enrolled in an ongoing women's seminary level study, and sits on the women's advisory board of her home church, Green Acres Baptist Church. Sharon has led numerous "Following the Shepherd Through Faith" studies and prays that you will never look at sheep and the Shepherd in the same way again. She has been married for 30 years to her husband Jeff. They reside in Tyler, Texas and are the parents of two married children, Melissa and Eric.

For the first time, one of New York City's major resident authors spins a breathtakingly immediate, intimate family novel set around the September 11th attacks. Thirty-four and decidedly independent, Renata has been known to keep her involvement with people - men in particular - to a minimum. Even her job at the library keeps her at a remove from the uncertainty of trusting other people with the stories of her past. Instead, she loses herself in language, always measuring the integrity of words against lived experience. Then Jack, patient, solid and sexy, enters her life. One bright September morning as Renata walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to work, the sky bursts open and change comes without warning. It quickly becomes clear in the days ahead that Renata cannot keep memories of her buried past - of a twin sister, a betrayal, of family truths too ugly to acknowledge - at bay. Written with tremendous compassion and imagination, informed by an abiding love for the people of New York, and crafted by a master storyteller at the height of her powers, "The Writing on the Wall" is a profoundly engaging novel about how one woman saw - and we all continue to ponder - the defining event of our time.

Roy, a psychotherapist, and his first wife, Bea, a caterer, are the linchpins of an extended family dispersed throughout an apartment building on New York's Upper West Side. Around them cluster their four children with assorted friends and lovers; Roy's next two wives, one of them stolen from a neurotic parent; and Bea's lover (the Russian emigres superintendent), lesbian artist sister, and
caustic mother.  

Blending satire and sympathy, Lynne Sharon Schwartz takes aim at contemporary social and sexual behavior as this confused but clever cast of characters, with their entanglements and betrayals, seeks love and happiness in the free- for-all nineties. Blinded by self-deception, and driven by self-gratification, they couple and uncouple as they struggle to redefine the idea of family. In the
Family Way combines the frothiness and bounce of a sitcom with the literary elegance of an accomplished and wryly serious writer. Jane Austen would definitely approve.

Lynne Sharon Schwartz offers deeply felt insight into why people read and how what they read shapes their lives. By interweaving the story of her Brooklyn childhood with vivid memories of particular books, she has created an enchanting celebration of the printed word.

Searching for the causes of mental disorders is as exciting as it it complex. The relationship between pathophysiology and its overt manifestations is exceedingly intricate, and often the causes of a disorder are elusive at best. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone trying to track these causes, whether they be clinical researchers, public health practitioners, or psychiatric epidemiologists-in-training. Uniting theory and practice in very clear language, it makes a wonderful contribution to both epidemiologic and psychiatric research. Rather than attempting to review the descriptive epidemiology of mental disorders, this book gives much more dynamic exposition of the thinking and techniques used to establish it.
Starting out by tracing the brief history of psychiatric epidemiology, the book describes the study of risk factors as causes of mental disorders. Subsequent sections discuss approaches to investigation of biologic, genetic, or social causes and the statistical analysis of study results. The book concludes by following some of the problems involved in the search for genetic causes of mental disorders, and more complex casual relationships.

"One marvels at the force of seeing in Schwartz's No Way Out But Through and cannot help but feel a particular gratitude for her abundant humor. Go all in with these poems; you'll reap unknown rewards. She possesses a quick-witted imagination that sanctifies memories and makes room for the wondrous nature of our cosmopolitan lights." -Major Jackson

An injury at birth left Audrey with a wandering eye. Though flawed, the bad eye functions well enough to permit her an idiosyncratic view of the world, one she welcomes in the stifling postwar Brooklyn of the 1950s. During a journey to Manhattan to see a doctor about her sight, she begins to explore the sexual rites of adulthood. But can her romance last? In this beautifully observed novel, Lynne Sharon Schwartz raises themes of innocence and escape while illuminating the rich inner life of a singular girl.