I am very much looking forward to my reading list this week. There are some great books on it this week.

The first is a new release from Sherry V. Ostroff, Expulsion. This is a work of historical fiction set during the Spanish Inquisition. Having studied in Spain, while in college, I am very excited for this book.

Next on my reading list, is the first volume of The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. I’ve enjoyed watching the drama series on HBO and look forward to reading the book it was based on.

Finally, I just entered a Goodreads giveaway, hoping to win a copy of Jodi Picoult’s upcoming release, Mad Honey. While I’m waiting for that book. I decided to look for another of her existing releases. I settled on The Storyteller to enjoy in the audiobook format.

Join the conversation! Tell me what’s on your reading list this week in the comments.

Basseva Seneor has choices, but none are good. She can choose baptism to save herself from the brutality of the Inquisition. But that means giving up the man she loves. Or she can leave her homeland and never see her family again. In medieval Spain, after the Edict of Expulsion was signed into law in March 1492, there were few options for a Jew.

As the daughter of a powerful man who wielded much influence with Ferdinand and Isabella, Basseva thought she was safe. But without warning, she is arrested, accused of a capital offense, and is thrust into a terrifying world of lies, bigotry, torture, and execution.

Expulsion is an historical novel about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the injustice of the Edict of Expulsion, and one woman’s brave attempt to survive them both.

When this volume of Anne Lister’s diaries was first published in 1988, it was hailed as a vital piece of lost lesbian history. The editor, Helena Whitbread, had spent years painstakingly researching and transcribing Lister’s extensive journals, much of which were written in an elaborate code – what Lister called her ‘crypthand’, which allowed her to record her life in intimate, and at times, explicit, detail. Until then, Anne Lister’s lesbianism had been supressed or hinted at; this was the first time her story had been told. Anne Lister defied the role of nineteenth-century womanhood: she was bold, fiercely independent, a landowner, industrialist, traveller and lesbian – a woman who lived her life on her own terms.

Submit Your Book

book for review, please visit Contact Me and complete the form. I’ll review your request and respond within 48 hours. I’m also happy to work with authors on interviews. To set up an interview, please use the same form.

Some stories live forever…

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shame­ful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.