Night Owls

Gr 9 Up–In this stunning debut, Jewish vampire sisters battle the Prince of Demons while finding love and championing indie cinema in a novel that is by turns hilarious, heartrending, and historically illuminating. Teens Clara and Molly Sender are the managers of the Grand Dame Cinema on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, dedicating their spare time to saving early films—and drinking blood. Clara and Molly are Estries: century-old female vampires from Jewish folklore who can also turn into owls. Clara has two rules for survival: “No romance. Only feed on Jews.” The second rule is meant to protect their community from antisemitism, but the rule about romance is made to be broken. Molly (who was a Yiddish theatre starlet in her past life) is making viral clips about Yiddish theatre with her girlfriend, Anat, when their romance catches the eye of her landlord, Ashmodai, Prince of Demons. When Ashmodai steals Anat and Molly goes in search of her, Clara teams up with her secret crush, Boaz Harari, a Syrian-Jewish American high school graduate who also has the ability to see and converse with ghosts. In line with Jewish folk tales, the sisters and Boaz need to outwit Ashmodai to protect the world of the living. Alongside the suspenseful plot, Clara, Molly, and Boaz’s voices are distinct, offering poignant perspectives on what it has meant to be Jewish in America throughout history. Vishny’s prose is full of ironic humor, too: The sisters depend on the East Village bubbes at the cinema to send them Nice Jewish Boys to snack on (but not kill), a neat inversion of community matchmaking.