SheReaders Book Club

Eleanore of Avignon is the story of a woman who is unwilling to bend to the limitations her society places upon her when she becomes the unlikely apprentice to the pope’s physician at the most challenging and dangerous moment in medieval European history.

Provence, 1347. Eleanore (Elea) Blanchet is a midwife and budding herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she knows all too well from her late mother’s fate, she must be careful to stay within her station. So, she quietly accepts her role tending to the pregnant women in her home city of Avignon; spending time with her father and beloved twin sister, Margot; and escaping to the surrounding woods to forage for herbs when she can. At the very least, she is determined to preserve the little freedom she does have by staying unwed—unlike Margot, who is about to marry a man with painful connections to their mother’s death.

Then, in a chance encounter, Elea meets Guy de Chauliac, “Guigo,” the enigmatic personal physician to the powerful Pope Clement, who, against all odds, agrees to take her on as his apprentice. Under his tutelage, a whole new world opens to Elea—a world of status, wealth, and fascinating medical cases—but just as she starts to settle into her new position, the much-feared plague hits Europe, making Elea and Guigo's work more urgent than ever. And as if that weren’t enough, the disgraced Queen Joanna of Naples arrives in Avignon to stand trial for her husband’s murder—and she is pregnant and in need of a midwife, a role only Elea can fill.

As the Black Death spreads like wildfire, leaving half the city dead in its wake—and as the queen's childbirth approaches—Elea finds herself battling what seems to be an unwinnable war. All the while, the people of Avignon are becoming more and more desperate for a scapegoat, and a group of religious heretics launch a witch hunt, one that could cost her everything.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Woman on Fire, the harrowing and ultimately triumphant tale of a Jewish WWII assassin turned Hollywood star ...

The Goddess Of Warsaw is an enthralling story of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret. When the famous actress Lena Browning is threatened by someone from her war-time past, she must put her skills into play to protect herself, her illustrious career, and those she loves, then and now.

Before she was a “Living Legend”, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a wealthy Polish Jew whose life and prominent family were destroyed by the Nazis and imprisoned with the rest of Warsaw's Jews in a ghastly ghetto. Determined to fight back, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy and an assassin, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the Warsaw ghetto to protect her family and fellow Jews. While Bina accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process – including a forbidden love.

More than a decade after escaping the horrors of the war, Lena Browning rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but hunger for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Fierce and fearless, Lena uses her star power to right the past’s wrongs . . . and perhaps even finds the happy ending she never had.

A gripping page-turner of one of history’s most heroic uprisings and a glamourous actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.