Stephen King calls Hesh Kestin's The Siege of Ghetto Tel Aviv "scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote." Iran leads five Arab armies in a brutal victory over Israel, which ceases to exist. Within hours, its leaders are rounded up and murdered, the IDF is routed, and the country's six million Jews concentrated in Tel Aviv, which becomes a starving ghetto. While the US and the West sit by, the Moslem armies—taking a page from the Nazi playbook—prepare to kill off the entire population. On the eve of genocide, Ghetto Tel Aviv makes one last attempt to save itself, as an Israeli businessman, a gangster, and a cross-dressing fighter pilot put together a daring plan to counterattack. Will it succeed? The Siege of Ghetto Tel Aviv is as as bizarrely funny as it is fast-paced. In the words of Stephen King: "An irrepressible sense of humor runs through it. It's not satire I'm talking about—it's stuff like the cross-dressing pilot (my favorite...

Set in post-WWII Africa, Polynesia, and Hollywood, the three novellas that make up Based on a True Story reveal the roots of contemporary life in a world at war with itself. These novellas are reminiscent of work by Steve Stern and Philip Roth.Hesh Kestin is a recovering foreign correspondent who reported on local wars, global business, and exotic mayhem in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for publications such as Forbes, Newsday, and The Jerusalem Post, and US magazines as diverse as Playboy and Inc. Cited by Media Guide for best foreign correspondence, his work has won many awards.

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. From the author of the short fiction collection Based on a True Story comes a vibrant, hilarious addition to the genre of mob tragicomedy. Twenty-year-old Russell Newhouse, a quick-witted scholar and skirt-chaser, has New York's organized crime scene thrust upon him by a man called Shushan "Shoeshine" Cats, who interrupts a meeting of a Brooklyn Jewish men's society where Russell is serving as secretary. Shushan is in need of a favor and promptly takes Russell under his wing. What ensues is a classic boy-meets-mob story: part noir, part comedy, part epic. Kestin's richly layered characters-a monstrously obese German organized crime attorney named Frit von Zeppelin, a Jewish Texan who speaks in malapropisms, a dentist who anglicizes or Yiddishizes his name depending on his mood-are straight out of Dickens; his vivid attention to the details of place, New York, and time, 1963, is like poetic journalism; and his snappy, concise prose and dialogue is on par with Raymond Chandler. Kestin zips through Russell's sexual trysts, dealings in back rooms of Little Italy restaurants, and encounters with historical events like the JFK assassination with unflagging humor and insight. Review"The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats just may be the best book you never read. Think The Godfather on laughing gas, or Catch-22 with guns. It's also as good a novel about life in the 60s as you'll ever pick up. Witty, sexy, thrilling, and all story. You can't put the damn thing down. If you're still one of the blessed who reads for pleasure, get this book, because it's a pleasure to read."—Stephen King