When Lisa Sharkey was invited to a literacy event at the New York Public Library featuring Her Majesty Queen Camilla of England, who was visiting during the British royal couple’s state visit to the United States, the publisher knew just what to gift the Queen.
Sharkey, senior vice president and publisher of Harper Influence, an imprint of HarperCollins, acquired the worldwide rights to Harmony, His Majesty King Charles III’s book that champions sustainability and the environment, when the King was still the Prince of Wales. With a new Italian edition freshly printed, a project His Majesty King Charles had been keen to see through, she brought a copy to present to Her Majesty The Queen should she have the opportunity.
Alongside Harmony, Sharkey brought along another book: Conversations With My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World.
The book, due out on May 26, was written by journalist Nikki Goldstein and Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the associate rabbi at Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi in Sydney, Australia, and is based on their long conversations on faith, meaning and hope. Schlanger, a London native, was murdered in the Dec. 14 terror attack at the community’s annual “Chanukah by the Sea” celebration on Bondi Beach, alongside 14 others, including a 10-year-old girl.
The pair had been weeks away from finishing the manuscript when the rabbi was killed.
From the moment Sharkey encountered the book proposal, it was unlike anything she had read.
“Every time I would read the pages, I would break down sobbing,” she said.
She decided to gift the book to the Queen if she found she had a chance to speak with her. This feeling was compounded on Wednesday morning when news broke of an antisemitic terror attack in London.
At Wednesday’s reception at the New York Public Library, after Her Majesty Queen Camilla delivered what Sharkey described as “an absolutely beautiful speech” about literacy, she moved into the room to greet guests. After Sharkey presented the Queen with the Italian edition of Harmony, Sharkey told her she had something else. Rabbi Schlanger, she explained, was the British-born rabbi in Sydney murdered at the Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach. His book was about to be published, and Sharkey wanted to present a copy to the Queen.
“She listened very keenly,” Sharkey says, “and was appreciative to receive it.”
A String of Connections
Sharkey has overseen the publication of more than 100 New York Times bestsellers over her career, including Hostage by Eli Sharabi. But she has rarely connected with a project the way she has with this one.
On Dec. 14, 2025, the first night of this past Chanukah, the proudly Jewish publisher and her husband were heading to her mother-in-law’s house to light the menorah and were deeply affected by the attack in Sydney.
“Within two or three days of the massacre, a literary agent friend from Israel reached out and told me about a book she was presenting, which was Conversations with My Rabbi. That’s how I came to be the publisher of this book,” she explained.
Several weeks later, Sharkey’s husband unexpectedly passed away while the family was on their annual vacation in the Dominican Republic. As she grieved, she found something of her own story in Schlanger’s, only deepening her relationship with the book.
Wherever she turned, the connections kept appearing. At a wedding in London, she found herself seated next to a woman whose husband had recently changed careers to become a painter.
“I asked what his latest work had been,” Sharkey said, “and, of course, it just so happened that he had completed a portrait of Rabbi Schlanger blowing shofar on Bondi Beach. It was unbelievable. Like, what are the chances?”
Later that night, she met one of Schlanger’s sisters.
“She and I connected very deeply,” Sharkey said, “and we almost couldn’t be pulled apart from one another.”
The two women bonded over their respective losses; she said that she felt Schlanger’s presence alongside them.
Last Thursday, Sharkey visited the Ohel, the resting place of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—bringing with her a copy of Conversations with My Rabbi.
“Why? I don’t know exactly,” she said, “but it just felt right.”
Conversations With My Rabbi will be published simultaneously on May 26, 2026, by Harper Influence in the United States, HarperCollins Australia, and Harper Nonfiction in the United Kingdom.
What a brilliant move to gift the queen with Rabbi Shlanger’s book!
I cried when I heard Lisa’s husband died as he was a brother of my previous lawyer.i read of Lisa’s accomplishments and I wanted to write her to express my condolences but sorry I did not.
Vivian Singer
I hope the book is extraordinarily well accepted by the Jewish public and the non-Jewish public as well, for that matter. There’s every reason to assume it will be, b’ezras Hashem. Rabbi Shlanger was a special Yid and a special chossid. Surely this book contains much that is relevant to everyone and offers much to think about. Yehai zichro baruch.