I am very much looking forward to the new books on my list this week.

The first book on my list is one I picked up from the gift shop on a visit to the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, in New Orleans. The museum is dedicated to sharing the unique experience of Jewry in the American South. The book I selected is Matzah Ball Gumbo, which explores the fusion of traditional Jewish dishes with a southern flare.

Next on my list is Drinking: A Love Story. This book was recommended by a friend. Having spent 10 years in the Wisconsin bar business, I’ve seen the effects of addiction and it’s impact on so many lives. I’m looking forward to digging into this one.

And finally, I’ll be finishing the two book series I started last week with Namesake. What can I say, I’m hooked!

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

From the colonial era to the present, Marcie Cohen Ferris examines the expressive power of food throughout southern Jewish history. She demonstrates with delight and detail how southern Jews reinvented culinary traditions as they adapted to the customs, landscape, and racial codes of the American South. Richly illustrated, this culinary tour of the historic Jewish South is an evocative mixture of history and foodways, including more than thirty recipes to try at home.

Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as “liquid armor,” a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.

It was love at first sight. The beads of moisture on a chilled bottle. The way the glasses clinked and the conversation flowed. Then it became obsession. The way she hid her bottles behind her lover’s refrigerator. The way she slipped from the dinner table to the bathroom, from work to the bar. And then, like so many love stories, it fell apart. Drinking is Caroline Kapp’s harrowing chronicle of her twenty-year love affair with alcohol.

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Trader. Fighter. Survivor.

With the Marigold ship free of her father, Fable and its crew were set to start over. That freedom is short-lived when she becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. In order to get to her intended destination she must help him to secure a partnership with Holland, a powerful gem trader who is more than she seems.

As Fable descends deeper into a world of betrayal and deception, she learns that the secrets her mother took to her grave are now putting the people Fable cares about in danger. If Fable is going to save them then she must risk everything, including the boy she loves and the home she has finally found.