Overbooked Book Lists

New Orleans Stars Booklist

Page Modified: June 19, 2009

Fiction (all genres) set in New Orleans.

Fiction

• The Marriage of the Sea
  Author: Alison, Jane
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 24 ISBN: 0374199418 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  As alluring as The Love-Artist, this is a contemporary tale of love and ambition, betrayal and revenge, set in two gloriously watery cities.
  Suggested Reading: Venice
  Updated 1.10.03
• Storyville
  Author: Battle, Lois
  Publisher: Viking $ ISBN: 0670838675 Date: 1993
  Booklist
  The Washinton Post calls Lois Battle "a born storyteller". Her novel Storyville describes a ragtime city within a city--the largest, most notorious, and only legal red-light district in the U.S.--where hard cash bought the softest goods. "The novel's atmosphere is redolent of honeysuckle and jasmine, cafe brulot and cinnamon buns".--Newsday.
  Updated 7.6.04
• Jackson
  Byrd, Max
  Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell List Price: $23.95 ISBN: 055309632x Date: 1997
  Kirkus
  In his critically acclaimed novel Jefferson, Byrd revealed the private life of one of American history's most beloved and elusive figures. Now, in the magnificant tradition of Gore Vidal's Lincoln and Burr, he capture the essense of Andrew Jackson, one of the nation's most feared and admired leaders.
  
• Fat White Vampire Blues
  Author: Fox, Andrew
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 13.95 (paper) ISBN: 0345463331 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  If Dracula slept with A Confederacy of Dunces, this funny first novel about Jules, a feckless, overweight vampire would be the result. He's watched his neighborhood go to hell--and now, a new vampire is looking to drive him out. Jules must find a way to contend with life's hurdles--without getting a stake through the heart.
  Updated 4.28.03
• In the River Sweet
  Author: Henley, Patricia
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421270 Date: 2002
  Library Journal
  From the author of Hummingbird House--a National Book Award Finalist--comes an emotionally enthralling novel about family and faith, and what it means to be moral in a world of conflicting moral codes.
  Updated 8.16.02
• Burning Marguerite
  Author: Inness-Brown, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375411968 Date: 2002
  PW
  Waking to the chill of a snow-cloaked morning, carpenter James Jack finds his 94-year-old "Tante, " Marguerite Deo, lying dead outside his cabin. As he confronts the mystery of her death, an emotionally intricate and unexpected tale unfolds in a narrative that moves from the present back to a windswept New England island at the turn of the century, and to New Orleans during the Depression and World War II.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Debuts
  Updated 1/2/02
• Dogs of Babel
  Author: Pankhurst, Carolyn
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 21.95 ISBN: 0316168688 Date: 2003
  Library JournalBooklist
  A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness--their Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 5.14.03
• Accordion Crimes
  Author: Proulx, Annie
  Publisher: Scribner $ 25 ISBN: 0684195488 Date: 1996
  BooklistKirkusLJPW
  E. Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes is a masterpiece of storytelling that spans a century and a continent. Proulx brings the immigrant experience in America to life through the eyes of the descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Africans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians and many others, all linked by their successive ownership of a simple green accordion. The music they make is their last link with the past -- voice for their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance. Proulx's prodigious knowledge, unforgettable characters and radiant language make Accordion Crimes a stunning novel, exhilarating in its scope and originality. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 7.26.04
• Yellow Jack
  Author: Russell, Jack
  Publisher: Norton List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393047687 Date: 1999
  PW
  An apprentice at a Paris studio credited with inventing the magic art of photography flees to New Orleans with his master's stolen camera and achieves fame. His success leads to his entanglement with a voodoo-adept mistress.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Mitt Man
  Author: Taylor, Mel
  Publisher: William Morrow List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0688160948 Date: 1999
  BL
  Expertly evoking black life in the south in the late 1920's, The Mitt Man, set in a world of gospel choirs and chain gangs, explores the dodgy realm where grifters get religion, and a perfect scam just may pay off in salvation.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | Grift Sense
• A Confederacy of Dunces
  Author: Toole, John Kennedy
  Publisher: Louisiana State University Press $24.95 ISBN: 0807126063 Date: 2000
  Pulitzer Prize, ALA Notable Book
  This 20th anniversary edition of the classic novel that won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction features a Foreword by Walker Percy that looks back on the history of this humorous story set in New Orleans about around a slob named Ignatius Reilly and his relationship with his mother.
  Updated 7.6.04

And:

• The Vampire Armand
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0679454470 Date: 1998
  
  In her latest installment of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice brings readers the story of Armand--eternally young, with the face of a Botticelli angel--who first appeared in his dark glory in Interview with the Vampire. Moving through scenes of luxury, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to 19th-century Paris and toady's New Orleans, this romantic hero is forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.
  Updated 7.26.04
• Lasher
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 30 ISBN: 0679412956 Date: 1993
  Kirkus
  Increasingly as popular as her legendary vampires, Anne Rice's Mayfair witches return in the paperback edition of the bestselling sequel to The Witching Hour. Around the globe, through time and between the worlds, the beautiful coven queen Rowan Mayfair flees the evil spell of the darkly compelling Lasher.
  Updated 7.26.04
• Witching Hour
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 35 ISBN: 0394587863 Date: 1990
  Kirkus
  From the author of the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles comes a huge mesmerizing novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries. Two people with special powers are drawn together and set out in a passionate alliance to unlock the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift. As the strange saga is played out, a world of witches is created that will fascinate readers for years to come.
  Updated 7.26.04
• Interview With the Vampire
  Author: Rice, Anne
  Publisher: Knopf $ 27.95 ISBN: 0394498216 Date: 1976
  In a remote room in a large city, a young reporter sits face-to-face with his most astonishing subject: a onetime New Orleans gentleman plantation owner who, in vividly terrifying and haunting detail, recalls his centuries of extraordinary life--beginning with his initiation into the ranks of the living dead at the hands of the sinister, sensual vampire Lestat.
  Updated 7.26.04

Also:

• The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur by John Gregory Brown
• French Silk by Sandra Brown
• Madeline's Ghost: A Novel of New York, New Orleans, and the Next World by Robert Girardi
• Big Time by Marcel Montecino

Mystery & Suspense

• Cold Steel Rain
  Author: Abel, Kenneth
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146628 Date: 2000
  Booklist
  A gripping mystery set in New Orleans features an idealistic attorney reduced to political gopher who's set up to take the fall--posthumously--to ward off a breaking political scandal.
  Suggested Reading: Political Fiction
  Updated 8/18/00
• Crossroad Blues: Nick Travers
  Author: Atkins, Ace
  Publisher: St Martins List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312192541 Date: 1998
  PW
  On August 15, 1938, the most celebrated figure in blues history, Robert Johnson, was murdered outside a Greenwood, Mississippi, juke joint. More than 50 years after, a college professor, following rumors of nine unknown Johnson recordings, disappears in the Mississippi Delta. Blues historian Nick Travers leaves New Orleans to track down the missing professor - and to unravel the greatest mystery in all of blues lore.
  Suggested Reading: Music
• Purple Cane Road
  Author: Burke, James Lee
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385488440 Date: 2000
  BooklistLibrary JournalPW
  While helping out an old friend, Dave Robicheaux is stunned when a pimp looks at him sideways and asks if he is Mae Guillory's boy, the whore a bunch of cops murdered 30 years ago. Thus begins Burke's finest Robicheaux novel, a work with all the dimensions of a classic.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | Private Investigators
  Updated 8/8/00
• Shelter From the Storm
  Author: Dunbar, Tony
  Publisher: Putnam Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399143017 Date: 1998
  PWKirkus
  New Orleans lawyer Tubby Dubonnet is plunged into a chaotic Carnival deluge in the latest mystery by the author of Trick Question. When big-time criminal Willie LaRue flies into The Big Easy for a Mardi Gras heist, Tubby attempts to thwart his murderous intentions and finds himself fighting for his life - and the very soul of his beloved city.
  
• Flint
  Author: Eddy, Paul
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399146539 Date: 2000
  PW
  An exceptionally talented undercover policewoman, Grace Flint nearly dies in a botched sting operation. Months later, physically healed but psychologically scarred, she gets an unexpected clue about her attacker and disappears on a mission of revenge, unaware that she is about to pull the first string that will unravel a complex web of international treachery, extortion, and murder.
  Updated 6/30/00
• Chasing the Devil's Tail
  Author: Fulmer, David
  Publisher: Poisoned Pen $ 24.95 ISBN: 1890208841 Date: 2001
  PW
  1907 Storyville. Cultures, races, and religions more often blend than clash in a rich gumbo only New Orleans could serve up. But trouble brews. In this red light district, prostitutes ply their trade whether in cramped cribs or elegant houses of French ancestry, while music surges through its streets and helps harmonize the light and dark elements. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 10/11/01
• Jass
  Author: Fulmer, David
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 23 ISBN: 0151010250 Date: 2005
  LJ
  In the rowdy red-light district of Storyville, four players of the new music they call "jass" have turned up dead. When Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr begins to investigate, he discovers every victim once played in the same band, and the only one left alive has gone into hiding.
  Suggested Reading: Music and Fiction
  Updated 12.27.04
• The Client
  Author: Grisham, John
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 29.95 ISBN: 038542471x Date: 1993
  Booklist
  The Firm catapulted Grisham into the ranks of this country's most popular authors, spending 47 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and 18 weeks as number one in paperback. Now Grisham has crafted another gripping tale of legal intrigue. A young boy is inadvertantly present at the bizarre suicide of a New Orleans defense attorney on the eve of the biggest trial of his career.
  Updated 7.6.04
• Fever Season
  Author: Hambly, Barbara
  Publisher: Bantam List Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 0553102540 Date: 1998
  PW
  With a seductive prose style and period detail reminiscent of The Alienist, bestselling author Hambly continues the "magically rich and poignant" story of a free man of color in 1830's New Orleans.
  Suggested Reading: New Orleans
• Neon Smile
  Author: Lochte, Dick
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 21 ISBN: 0671747126 Date: 1995
  PW
  A 30-year-old murder case, racial politics, and a serial killer versed in voodoo haunt New Orleans in this atmospheric thriller by the award-winning author of Sleeping Dog. "As colorful and entertaining as any police thriller ever inspired by the . . . Big Easy".--Joseph Wambaugh.
  Updated 7.6.04
• Rebels of Babylon
  Author: Parry, Owen
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060513926 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  Civil War detective Abel Jones investigates murder and theft in New Orleans in this dark and rich sixth installment in the Hammett and Herodotus award-winning series.
  Suggested Reading: Civil War Stars
  Updated 1.5.05
• Ghost of a Flea
  Author: Sallis, James
  Publisher: Walker $ 23.95 ISBN: 0802733697 Date: 2001
  Kirkus
  James Sallis brings the saga of Lew Griffin--private detective, teacher, writer, poet and black man in a white man's world--to its stunning conclusion.
  Updated 9/21/01
• Bluebottle: Lew Griffin Mystery
  Author: Sallis, James
  Publisher: Walker List Price: $ 22.95 ISBN: 0802733239 Date: 1998
  PW
  Lew Griffin's fifth outing begins when someone fires a shot towards him. When he fully comes to, Griffin discovers that most of a year has gone by since that night. Somewhere in the Crescent City there's an answer . . . and some very strange allies . . . if they can be trusted.
  
• Eyes of the Cricket
  Author: Sallis, James
  Publisher: Walker List Price: $ 21.95 ISBN: 0802733131 Date: 1997
  PW
  PW Best Book of '97
  Lew Griffin is a survivor, a black man in New Orleans, a detective, teacher, and writer. Having spent years finding others, he has lost his son ... and himself in the process. Now a derelict has appeared in a hospital claiming to be Lewis Griffin and displaying a copy of one of Lew's novels. It is the beginning of a quest that will take Griffin into his own past while he searches in the present for three missing young men. - Publisher Marketing.
  
• 82 Desire: Skip Langdon
  Author: Smith, Julie
  Publisher: Fawcett List Price: $ 24 ISBN: 0449000605 Date: 1998
  Kirkus
  Detective Talba Wallis is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a councilwoman's husband. But the private eye who hired Talba turns up with a bullet in his chest. At first, Police Detective Skip Langdon thinks it's just a small case with some big names. But something huge is starting to unfold--a violence motivated by that old demon . . . desire.
• Gator Aide
  Author: Speart, Jessica
  Publisher: Avon $ 5.99 ISBN: 0380792885 Date: 1997
  PW
  Wildlife agent Rachel Porter is called to investigate a dead alligator found chained to the bathtub of a murdered hooker. She realizes that the gator did not die from the gunshot wounds in its head but was killed by a drug overdose from the heroin-stuffed condoms packed into its stomach. Rachel soon finds herself pursued by corrupt politicians, drag queens and a sexy police detective while trying to solve the murder.
  Updated 7.6.04

Also:

• New Orleans Requiem by D.J. Donaldson
• Crooked Man by Tony Dunbar
• The Intersection of Law and Desire by J.M. Redmann
• Black Hornet by James Sallis
• House of Blues by Julie Smith
• Jazz Funeral by Julie Smith