The Fallen Angel is simply #1. Why? Being named the #1 bestseller in its debut week by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and other major media outlets will do that. Israeli secret agent (sometimes, anyway) and art restorer Gabriel Allon returns in the most unlikely place—The Vatican—where his restoration of a priceless Caravaggio is disrupted by a death in St. Peter's Basilica. The victim? A beautiful woman who may have stumbled on to one of the most nefarious antiquities stealing/dealing rings the world has ever known. Meet the bestselling author of The Fallen Angel and The Rembrandt Affair among others, as he speaks with Susan Taylor, veteran NBC 7 San Diego news anchor, about his characters, his craft and his calling.

Enjoy bagels and coffee and delve into the depth and breadth of Jewish cuisine, which can be as vast and as compelling as the history of the Jewish people itself. Join Galit Urich, Michal Levi, and Jennie Starr (Israeli Food in America), Stanley Ginsberg (Inside the Jewish Bakery), and Judy Kempler (One Egg Is a Fortune:) for a panel discussion that will set your mind buzzing and your stomach yearning! The authors and chefs will awaken your appetite with recipes and tales from the kitchen that span the globe—Eastern Europe, Israel, America, Latin America, and beyond. Every meal, tells a story rich in shared traditions, but has a flavor all its own.

A first for the San Diego Jewish Bookfair - this Fashion Program will be Ari Seth Cohen, a man who has made his name by celebrating the beauty and glamour of women in their later years (both through his Advanced Style blog and his Portraits of Older Women pictorial), and Rachelle Bergstein, whose Women from the Ankle Down examines our culture’s ongoing obsession with footwear. The authors will share their distinctly unique and equally engaging stories about fashion and fashionistas.  Bookfair Boutique by local vendors will be available before and after the program.

Want to know how YOU actually understand the world? In Subliminal, physicist, professor, and author Leonard Mlodinow explores and analyzes the subconscious, the hidden engine within us all that drives how we perceive—and misperceive—the world both around us and within us. Meet the author (A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design, both with Stephen Hawking, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality, with Deepak Chopra, and The Drunkard’s Walk) when he takes you to the intersection of faith, fact, imagination, and “inner life.” Mlodinow went from teaching science, to writing Star Trek and MacGyver scripts, to charting a course all his own, a man who Stephen Hawking says, “…never fails to make science both accessible and entertaining.”

There’s nothing funny about high-anxiety… unless you’re hearing about it from Daniel Smith! The author’s discussion on his new book,Monkey Mind is both humorous and eye-opening true, clinical anxiety goes far beyond mere nail-biting, and can tend toward “existential ruin,” as the author elegantly puts it. Join Smith on his journey from a somewhat-more-than-averagely-nervous kid on his first day of college, to a young adult whose anxiety torpedoed more than a few relationships, to a grown man who has learned to tame his condition with a combination of fearlessness and humor. His talk will inspire anyone who feels that anxiety has to have the upper-hand. O Magazine says, “You’ll laugh out loud many times during Daniel Smith’s Monkey Mind.”