Gabrielle Sher Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Gabrielle Sher is an accomplished published author.

She attended Hamilton College for her studies. There she received the Rosenfeld Chapbook Prize for Bowerbird, her novella.

Gabrielle also attended the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she received her MFA and PhD in Creative Writing. Her debut novel was Odessa and came about as part of her doctoral dissertation, ‘Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic’.

Gabrielle writes and lives in New Jersey. She is married and shares her life with her husband Jamie, and Bo, their dog.

Odessa is a 2026 novel written by Gabrielle Sher. This is an incredible debut work from a talented author that readers won’t want to miss. Others have praised this book for its value, with author Nat Cassidy calling it ‘A triumph’. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, calling it a ‘tender and gutting showstopper’. Read on to get a summary of what you can expect with this novel.

This book is set in a version of Russia at the height of the pogroms. When a family is dealing with their grief and cannot seem to find a break from their pain, they decide that they are going to turn to ancient magic as a way to resurrect their daughter and bring her back from the dead.

Yetta is a teen girl who is smart and quick and has a wild spirit that is constantly searching for something more. She finds her home life oppressive in many ways. It is too much for her to contend with her mother’s anxiety and the many rules set forth by her father. She wants to find freedom out there and discover who she is, something that has never been a reality for her under these constraints.

Yet her family does have a very good reason for being so cautious and setting forth all of these rules for her. Their shetl is overtaken by fear because Jews are going missing without explanation. Everywhere, there are whispers that an attack is coming. The family is right to be worried. Violence arriving at their door means that Yetta is killed as a result in an act that no one saw coming but everyone feared would happen anyway.

The family is devastated by what has happened and they don’t really know how to deal with it. Her father is dealing with his grief and is moving through old texts and magic, looking for any type of way that he could possibly bring his daughter back to the world of the living. While this may seem like utter folly, his efforts seem to pay off when they actually work.

Yetta is at last returned to the family, but there is something different about this version that sets her apart from the girl that they knew. Even though she looks to be exactly the same person, the family cannot get over the fact that she is not the same girl that she used to be. Whatever individual that they knew, this Yetta is not the same.

The new Yetta starts to pick up on the fact that they may be hiding a secret from her. She herself has no idea that she is a reproduction of the person that once was. There also may be an answer for her in a creature that is out there in the woods– something that might have been made by her father and has its own plans.

Can the family figure out what they must do in the wake of resurrecting their daughter? Will they learn to live with this version as they have no other substitute, or will they end up regretting the decision to bring her back and find a way that the decision is reversed?

Full of suspense and the feeling of the older, more serious fairy tales, this is a work that readers and critics alike have loved. Get a copy of this book by Gabrielle Sher for yourself and follow along with every word of the debut novel that people like author Monika Kim have deemed ‘Breathtaking’.