Nevada Barr's latest takes on Acadia National Park

             I’m a big fan of Anna Pigeon, Nevada Barr’s National Park Service Ranger who must face a host of mysteries in her work at the nation’s parks. Anna travels to Acadia National Park in Maine in Barr’s latest mystery, “Boar Island.”

            Anna takes a temporary job as Acting Chief Ranger at the Maine park but brings along her aunt Gwen, her paraplegic friend Heath Jarrod and her daughter, Elizabeth, who’s lately been the target of cyber-bullying. Anna hopes the move will give Elizabeth time to recover from the brutal attacks and the group moves into a house on rugged Boar Island, off the Maine coast.

             The group has barely arrived when new cyber-attacks happen, making them realize the stalker has followed them to Maine. Then a murder occurs, which calls for Anna’s attention. By the end of the story, the two tales conclude in a dramatic conclusion, with some pieces intertwining.

            The novel brings to light the devastating impact cyber-bullying can cause, especially on vulnerable young people. One of the reasons the group moves to the remote island is because Heath found her daughter attempting suicide. There’s also a corresponding thread of two identical twins finding one another.

            Barr, who lives in New Orleans, has worked as a ranger for the National Park Service and brings that experience to her novels. A travel writer when not penning this book column, I love her books because she sets each one in a new park, using the setting as if it was another character. I was excited that she had set this one in Acadia National Park, one of the most popular parks in the system but one I had never visited. I was disappointed the park wasn’t used as prominent as in her other books. The two parallel story threads also became tiring until the action sped up in the second half of the book.

            Barr will sign “Boar Island” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 31, at Octavia Books of New Orleans.

Discovering authors

            An ardent science fiction fan and native of Lafayette, Michael Moreau has written several book series, including “The Futureman Adventures,” “Rocket Riders of the 27th Century” and as co-creator of “The Robert Carson Files.” His latest books are “Future Tales and Other Such Rubbish” and “Sherlock Holmes: Monster Hunter.” Moreau is founder of the small publisher Outworld Press as well as being a photographer, filmmaker, costume designer, prop builder and artist. For more information, visit www.mmoreau.net.

            Louisiana’s Rhonda R. Dennis started out in emergency medical care but after graduating college as a non-traditional student felt compelled to write a short story. She has since written several novels and short stories, including “The Green Bayou” series, and has released a romantic comedy titled “Magnolia Blossoms” and a contemporary romance “Yours Always.” She was a nominee in multiple categories for the 2013 Indie Romance Convention Readers’ Choice Awards. For more information, visit www.rhondadennis.net.

Louisiana native Jackie Shemwell earned a degree in French and maintains a love of Francophone Cajun folklore. She weaves personal experience and family history into her short stories, poetry and her first novel, a circa-1957 Southern Gothic suspense tale titled “The Devil in Canaan Parish.”

Elizabeth Sinclair hails from Florida but she sets her paranormal time-traveling novel, “Garden of the Moon,” at a Louisiana plantation named Harrogate that her main character Sara Wade has inherited. Lauren Faulkenberry is also not a native but her latest novel, “Bayou My Love,” is set in “Bayou Sabine, Louisiana,” where 30-year-old Enza Parker is attempting to flip a house she inherited from her estranged grandmother. When she arrives, she finds the house occupied by a cute firefighter who agrees to help with repairs.

All of these books are available online as ebooks.

Facebook discoveries

Just read on Facebook — where I get my news because people have forgotten what email is — that UL’s Ernest J. Gaines Center will host a one-month interdisciplinary NEH Summer Institute on the work of Ernest J. Gaines, titled “Ernest J. Gaines and the Southern Experience.” This program will be Monday through June 24 on the UL campus and is open to any collegiate faculty and graduate students across the country. For information, visit http://ernestgaines.louisiana.edu.

P.S. If you want to be in this column, which reaches thousands, drop me an email.

Walker Percy Weekend

The third annual Walker Percy Weekend, celebrating the life and work of one of Louisiana’s most acclaimed writers, is Friday through Sunday in St. Francisville. There will be panel discussions, scholar presentations, an art exhibition of photographs of Percy and a series of social and culinary events inspired by the author’s most famous works. In addition, there will be special events such as bourbon tastings and crawfish and craft beer in Parker Park. For more information, visit www.walkerpercyweekend.org.

Book events

            An Author Book Rally with several authors in attendance will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 4, at The Thensted Center in Grand Coteau.

            The Writers Guild of Acadiana meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 31, at Barnes & Noble Lafayette. The speaker will be WGA Vice President Greg Foshee, author of “A Crown of Jewels,” “A Crown of Thorns” and “Boudreaux’s Revenge.” The meeting is free and open to the public.

The Bayou Writers Group meets at 10 a.m. the first Saturday of each month at the Carnegie Memorial Library in Lake Charles. Sharyn Schmitz will speak on “Outlining and Publishing.” For information, visit http://bayouwritersgroup.com/.

Cheré Coen is the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country.” She writes Louisiana romances under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

'New Orleans Noir,' 'Afton Villa' releases, plus Stephen Utz offers Rodrigue lecture on Walker Percy

        Edgar Award-winning author Julie Smith curates a collection of reprints by American authors in “New Orleans Noir: The Classics 2,” part of a series of original noir anthologies by Akashic Books. Each volume comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. The New Orleans book includes stories ranging from 1843 to 2012 by authors James Lee Burke, Armand Lanusse, Grace King, Kate Chopin, O. Henry, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Ace Atkins, O’Neil De Noux, John Biguenet, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Nevada Barr and more.

            Publisher’s Weekly calls it “[An] irresistible sequel to Smith’s ‘New Orleans Noir’... Anyone who knows New Orleans even slightly will relish revisiting the city in story after story.”

Smith is the author of two detective series set in New Orleans. A former reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle, she lives in the Faubourg Marigny section of New Orleans. Smith, Atkins, Barr, DeNoux and Ruffin discuss and sign the book from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans.

Rodrigue lecture

            Stephen Utz will lecture on the late novelist Walker Percy as this year’s George Rodrigue Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Oliver Hall on the UL-Lafayette campus. Percy was born in North Carolina but lived most of his life in Covington, writing such classics as “The Moviegoer,” which won the National Book Award in 1962. Utz, who has a doctorate in philosophy from Cambridge University and is on the law faculty of the University of Connecticut, will speak on "The Itch for Omniscience: Walker Percy and The Examined Life.”

“Accepting everyday life, we ignore the paradox of its grip on our identity as human beings,” Utz said. “Everyday things in a sense define us, but our humanity eludes them and often eludes us as well. More surely than any other novelist of his day, Walker Percy took this paradox as his starting point. His modest but persistent seekers question their inheritance, the historical backdrop of Louisiana and the modern South, as well as the pervasive ideology of modern science and our broader cultural heritage.”

The free lecture sponsored by the George Rodrigue Endowment is open to the public.

New releases

            The massive Victorian plantation Afton Villa of St. Francisville was lost to fire in 1963, and when horticulturist Geneveive Munson Trimble visited in 1972 she was dismayed to see both the house and gardens in ruins. She and her husband, Bud, purchased the property and set about restoring the elaborate gardens. Their 40-year renovation is the subject of “Afton Villa: The Birth and Rebirth of a Nineteenth-Century Louisiana Garden” by LSU Press. The book details both the plantation’s history and the restoration of the 35-acre garden, including the alley of live oaks and azaleas, the ravine of daffodils, boxwood parterre and so much more. Trimble oversaw the restoration of the New Orleans Botanical Garden, where she served as president of its Foundation for 25 years. She has receive numerous awards including the Preservation Award from the Foundation for Historical Louisiana. Trimble will sign copies of the book from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans.

At the Lafayette Library

Lafayette Reads Together is exploring the book “Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream” by Joshua Davis. Davis is the author of several books, with “Spare Parts” being adapted into a documentary, “Underwater Dreams,” and then a 2015 movie, “Spare Parts,” starring George Lopez, Carlos Pena, Marisa Tomei and Jamie Lee Curtis. “Underwater Dreams” will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday at North Regional Library, followed by a talk on the book at 6:45 p.m. For more information and to see a schedule of events and obtain a copy of the book, visit http://lafayettepubliclibrary.org.
Zachary Richard, Louisiana’s first French language Poet Laureate, will join French immersion students, to read selections from “Les Cenelles,” the first African American poetry anthology in the United States. The event begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday at South Regional Library.

LSU Book Bazaar

The Annual LSU Book Bazaar, offering a wide variety of books from children’s books to textbooks and reference books, will be from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in the 4-H Mini Barn and Nelson Auditorium on the LSU campus. Proceeds help fund special purchases for the LSU Libraries’ collections.

Book events

Carole Boston Weatherford discusses and signs her book, “Freedom in Congo Square,” from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. today at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans.

Mary R. Arno signs her novel “Thanksgiving,” based on a short story that won the gold medal in the Faulkner Wisdom competition, at 6 p.m. Monday at Octavia Books of New Orleans. Arno is an award-winning journalist and a native of New Orleans.

Louisiana activist Emilie Bahr signs “Urban Revolutions: A Woman's Guide to Two-Wheeled Transportation” at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Octavia Books and 6 p.m. Thursday at Maple Street Bookstore of New Orleans. Bahr draws on her own experience as an everyday cyclist and a transportation planner in New Orleans to demystify urban bicycling in this field guide.

UNO professor of English Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux will be reading from and signing “Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist” and “Miss Grief and Other Stories” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Octavia Books of New Orleans.

C.S. Harris signs copies of her latest Sebastien St. Cyr mystery, “When Falcons Fall,” from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans.

Cheré Dastugue Coen is the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” She also writes Louisiana romances under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.