Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews-and with burning at the stake-its targets were more numerous, its techniques were more ambitious, and its effect on history has been greater than many understand. The Inquisition pioneered surveillance, censorship, and "scientific" interrogation. As time went on,...

From award-winning author G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King is an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. G. Willow Wilson's debut novel Alif the Unseen was an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and it established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. Now she delivers The Bird King , a stunning new novel that tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in...

"Kirsch offers up an amazing recounting of the abuses of clergy and state in those terrible times. Kirsch's powerful and cautionary account is essential reading for historians and anyone who wants to understand the potential dark side of religion." - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "A scathing account of the Inquisition's 600-year campaign to stifle religious dissent, as well as to persecute various groups of people it branded as alien menaces...

In mid-thirteenth century Provence, Dolssa de Stigata is a fervently religious girl who feels the call to preach, condemned by the Inquisition as an "unnatural woman," and hunted by the Dominican Friar Lucien who fears a resurgence of the Albigensian heresy; Botille is a matchmaker trying to protect her sisters from being branded as gypsies or witches--but when she finds the hunted Dolssa dying on a hillside, she feels compelled to protect her, a...

I hereby record those events, which took place in and around the city of Lazet relating to the assassination of our venerable Brother Augustin Duese in the year of the Incarnate Word, 1318. So writes Brother Bernard, an Inquisitor of Heretical Depravity, following the discovery of his superior's dismembered corpse. At a time when heresy is a heinous offence, routed out with ruthless determination, Brother Bernard is accustomed to dispensing harsh...

"England, 1324--a land rife with superstition and gripped by fear of the Church's holy wrath. When a beggar is murdered in the quiet village of Bottesford, his body draped across the altar of St. Mary's church in a perverse pose of pagan sacrifice, the Pope's Inquisitor General places the small hamlet in his sights. Anxious to stave off the Inquisition, the Bishop of Lincoln dispatches Thomas Lester, son of a disgraced Templar Knight, to investigate--but...

"In 1544, as Inquisition fires rage in Portugal, young José Mendez discovers he's Jewish--and that his parents died for their faith. With the help of the Ottoman sultan, he escapes and makes a new life in Istanbul, where he digs deeper into his Jewish roots. But when his own daughter secretly falls in love with the sultan's Muslim grandson, José finds himself in a life-changing dilemma, one that will shape generations to come. In 2002, Selim Osman,...

Isabel Perez is a sixteen-year-old who dreams of writing poetry, love, and being with the young nobleman Diego Altamirano; but in Trujillo, Spain in 1481 such a love is forbidden by the boy's family because Isabel's families are conversos, new Christians, but in the privacy of their home they still practice Judaism--a secret that could destroy them all when the Inquisition reaches Trujillo and they are forced to flee to the uncertain safety of Portugal,...

In the 16th century, with the aftermath of war between Spain and France, Don Carlo, the heir to the Spanish throne, comes to France to meet with his beloved Elizabeth de Valois. Inevitably politics divide the lovers, and while Rodrigue falls in with Flemish rebels, the Inquisition is determined to be the power behind the peace.